SYDNEY'S RACKETEERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 183, 4 August 1932, Page 10

SYDNEY'S RACKETEERS.

LATEST CHICAGO BRAND. MEN WHO ELUDE THE POLICE. SEEN AT RANDWICK PACES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 29. While the people who care seriously about the reputation of Sydney are no doubt pleased to hear that the FiftyFifty Club has been raided, there is a great deal more left for the police authorities to do in the way of "cleaning up" the metropolis and making it safe for the average peaceful citizen. A short time ago I supplied my readers with some biographical notes about Joe Ryan, who is still "wanted" on account of the Canberra and Mudgee train robberies. This week another newspaper informs us that though the Sydney police have sent word to Scotland Yard that he has escaped to England, he is now living at Lcwisham, five miles from Sydney!

Another eminent figure in our underworld who has been "in smoke" for 12 months is Frank Green, and, as in the Case of Ryan, the police profess to be quite unable to locate him. Yet it is asserted in the public Press this week that ever since ho "walked out on his bail" a year ago, he has been living at Durlinghurst. "Every evening," the story goes, "ho ■ strolls into a King's Cross hotel just before closing time, and enjoys a round of drinks." Like most notorious criminals, Green has a host of admirei-s, and it is alleged that a weekly levy is collected on his behalf from hotel keepers, bookmakers, and "racketeers" whom ho has befriended or terrorised in tho past." Ho is said to take the precaution of changing his furnished flat every week, leaving always at night, and ho is also credited with having grown a moustache and with occasionally wearing 'a false board—as when he attended tho stadium a fortnight ago to see the Striblin'g-Palmer fight. Ho is now said to be moving out to Watson's Bay, where he will be as safe as he has been at Darlinghurst—but, unlikoi Ryan, he has never been credited with any intention of surrendering to justice. "Let the coppers come and get'me!" ho says defiantly. And no one seems to know why the police have not accepted the invitation. "Striking Personality." How all this is fact and how much is fable, I am, of course, unable tosay. But the atmosphere of the underworld is always thick with rumours that very frequently have a solid foundation. Last week it was reported that two Australians who aro "among tho world's most celebrated confidence men and highclass swindlers" have come back to Sydney after an absence of 15 years. One was at tho races last week, and the police officer who saw him is reported to have said that "in manner, dress, general looks and betting cash he was far and away tho most striking personality, and the wealthiest seen on a Sydney racecourse for many years." This man is a South Australian. The other notorious criminal who has returned to his native land after a prolonged exile is a Qucenslander, and ho has apparently made crime pay quite as well as his friend and confederate. Both drive luxurious cars and spend freely; and it may bo some consolation for the honest and hardworking section of this community to know that, even now, Scotland Yard is inquiring anxiously after one of these "con" men, and that he has "gone north" for a holiday.

Band of Desperadoes. But the reports that reach us from the underworld—"by the pipe line," as the Americans say —are not always of this mildly picturesque character. It is rumoured that .Sydney is likely to enlarge its criminal experience in the near future through the advent of a band of desperadoes who mean to establish "racketeering" here on approved American lines. These latest importations hail from the American underworld. "The leader," it is said, "is. aged about 36 and ho has forgotten more about crime than most Australian criminals will ever know." Ho is tall, > dark and goodlooking, and—in keeping with the best "movie" tradition—ho always carries an automatic and a curved-blade knife near his left armpit. Ho is accompanied by aj "consort"—this genteel title is not my own invention—a "beautiful brunette," aged 21, who conies from Melbourne, and whose appearance is said to recall Greta Garbo. This young person is interested chiefly in other people's handbags, which, no doubt, provide a lucrative source of income, when the revenue derived from "the weed racket" —the stealing of tobacco and the levying of blackmail on tobacconists—temporarily fails. These interesting people aro wealthy, reckless and unscrupulous—they use a powerful car (stolen) and spend plenty of money in bribery. So now at last Sydney is completely equipped after the Chicago fashion with a handsome racketeer, attended by his gangsters.

This may sound to some of my readers liko tenth-rate melodrama. But there is plenty of detail available, which seems to give at least an air of verisimilitude to the picture. Take the gang-leader, for instance —he is said to bo a "Southern European" and, like nearly all the Sicilians and Neapolitans who figure so prominently in the Caponc records, he is mixed up with the Mafia and the Camorra. Ho came out here from England and America three years ago and ho has served at least one sentence for burglary in Australila. But his most pleasant reminiscences cluster round New York and Chicago, and he has been known to sa.y that he feels "quite homesick" for the sound of the "typewriter" and the "ukulele" —which is to say, the chatter of the machine guns that not infrequently wake the echoes of American city streets. Stiletto Found in Flat. . Even as I write, an interesting piece of evidence bearing on this story lias just come to hand. Last Saturday night a doctor was called hurriedly to a Hat near King's Cross—why does all this sort of thing happen In Darlhighurst?—-to treat a wounded man. Tho patient answered precisely to the description of the gangsters given above, and it seems that two of tho foreign leaders of the gang, quarrelling about the division of loot from two shops in Crown Street which they had plundered, came to blows. The victim, bandaged up, disappeared cursing loudly, and the rest of the gang, headed by the "beautiful brunette," who seemed to handle tho situation with great presence of mind, got their belongings! together and left hurriedly for another address in their "high-powered sedan."

But behind them in their flat the fleeing gangsters left the murderous l looking stiletto with which one of these "Southern Europeans" hart perforated tho other, and its photograph has appeared in the newspapers. So that there is at least this solid substratum of fact to support these fantastic tales of the "alarums and excursions" which, from time to time, convulse Sydney's underworld.