RANSOM DEMANDED.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20021, 1 September 1930, Page 11

RANSOM DEMANDED.

BLACKMAILERS* THREAT TO CITY. RAYAGE BY INSECT PBST. (UNITED FBBSS ASSOCIATION—BT ELECTBIC TELEGRAPH —COP7RIGHT.) (Received August 31st, 5.5 p.m.) BERLIN, August 30. Threats of death and financial ruin to a city of 125,000 people, followed by a chase by detectives in a railway train were episodes in a drama enacted at Magdeburg. A gang of blackmailers offered the city the alternative of paying a big ransom, or having its gardens and fields ravaged by an insect pest; and all reservoirs poisoned. The blackmailers added that they proposed to let loose a swarm of Colorado beetles, which would destroy the Magdeburg potato crop, which is the most important in the district. The gang's ultimatum arrived on Wednesday and included intricate instructions how the money was to be handed over. Detectives followed out the instructions in detail, hoping to track the blackmailers. They threw a packet supposed to contain money from a moving train, at the spot indicated by the exhibition of a huge letter "A", as instructed by the blackmailers. The detectives then pulled the train up rushed back to the spot, but a man on a bicycle had, in the, meantime, seized the packet and escaped. The gang still eludes capture.