DARING ESCAPE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

DARING ESCAPE.

ENGINEERED BY WOMAN

RECORD FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND,

SOME NOTORIOUS KILLERS

News has just reached Europe of one of the biggest escapes of prisoners from the Devil's Isle group of penal settlements belonging to the French Government, and the facts are of a most amazing character.

Not only did the number of prisoners getting completely away reach the record figure of 28, but for the first time in the history of the settlements a woman organised the flight from start to finish.

The actual name of the woman is not known to the authorities, but she is stated to be English by birth, and to be known in London by the name of " Diana of the Dials," a reference to the London district in which she lived with a notorious international gang until the murder of a young Frenchman in Air Street, Piccadilly, some years ago caused the gang to leave London hastily.

It was mainly for the sake of two members of this gang serving sentences on the

islands, Pat King and Julius Richards, that the woman organised this wholesale escape. Of the other 20 prisoners, three are notorious murderers, and the rest were condemned for some of the worst offences for which men are transported under French law to-day.

' Diana, the possessor of a. luxurious crop of bright red hair, is believed to be a native of Bristol, and it is stated in the dossier of the French police that though the name of Daly she has been using in France is known to be false, she has served terms of imprisonment in England and in France in various names. Hired Natives. After her release she sailed for Trinidad as secretary to an English business man, and when she arrived there immediately set to work to get into touch with King and Richards, with a view to organising the escape. She was joined by two male members of the gang, and, after Richards had intimated that the attempt would be more likely to succeed if it included the whole of the prisoners in the reserved part of one of the islands where he and King (said to be an Irishman) were confined, the plotters arranged for the purchase of three fairly large boats, which put out from Trinidad for " a little pleasure fishing off the coast."

There is little doubt that the three, with the aid of hived natives, landed at a secluded part of the He St. Laurent and hid for several days and nights in the

thick bush adjoining the huts of the privileged prisoners. After midnight the convicts in the plot quitted their sleeping quarters and joined the plotters in the bush, the solitary sentry on duty evidently having had something put in his drink earlier in the evening by an accomplice—he was found after the escape in a state of stupor, unable to say what had happened. When the alarm was given the fugitives had had a start of four hours. Ten clays later news came of their landing at different points on British and Venezuelan territory.