CAUGHT AT LAST

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 69, 18 September 1930, Page 22

CAUGHT AT LAST

CLEVER CRIMINAL

POWERFUL GANGSTER

FATAL FALSE STEP

]?or more than 30 years Joseph Grizzard was the leader of one of the clevereat and most successful gangs of criminals London has over known. He pitted Ms brains against, the police, and time after time he won.

Kieh, powerful, known to but few, and leaving his subordinates to commit, most of the crimes which ho planned, he is said by some to have boen the original from whom Sherlock Holiness famous rival, the master criminal Moriarty, was copied, says the "Western Mail."

Grizzard was a brilliant man who made crime pay. s By successful crime he made a fortune of £100,000. Ho lived in a big house, with a motor-car and servants, respected by his neighbours, and unsuspected by the police. He took infinite pains to avoid detection. He would plot and plan a big coup for months before it was to come off, spending sometimes thousands of pounds to get a return of £20,000.

He regarded crime as a legitimato ■business, in which ho invested his capital and from which he got dividends of a thousand or so per cent. An for the police—he called them bunglers, and laughed at them. Nevertheless Scotland Yard brought Mm to book in the end. Detectives stepped in just when lie had completed his most daring and most amazing crime—the theft of a pearl necklace •worth £135,000; and Grizzard— "Cammy," as his associates called him—was sent, to penal servitude for sovea years.

He went to his trial in the Old Bailey full of contempt for Scotland Yard's efforts to prove him guilty. "I know nothing about the robbery; I am innocent," he said from the dock. "The police are trying to make me the victim of their incompetence." Bnt for once the police were too j good for him. For once he had not covered up Ms tracks. £135,000 THEFT. It was a sensational story that was told at the trial.. Three men were charged, with Grizzard, with having been concerned in the robbery. James Loekott was Grizzard's chief assistant; Simon Silverjnan and Leiser Gutwirth, both Austrians, were subordinates. Silverman was a clever rogue; but Gutwirth was not. Gutwirth talked too much. But for him the four would never have been unmasked.

Counsel for the prosecution, outlining the case against the four men, told the jury how a necklace of 61 fine pearls, "with a diamond clasp, worth £135,000, had been stolen in some mysterious fashion on the way from Paris to London.

Mr. Mas Mayer, the London jewel merchant, who owned the necklace, had posted it to his agent in Paris, who thought that he had a buyer for it. "When the agent posted it back to London it disappeared. How it disappeared no ono knows to this day. All that is known is what came out at the trial; that the parcel containing the pearls arrived, with its seals intact, at the East Central post division of London; and that before the parcel arrived at Mr. Mayer's office the pearls had been taken out, lamps of sugar substituted, and fresh seals (very good imitations which Grizsard had made) put on. ARRESTED. ; Once he had possession of the pearls, Grizzard set machinery to work to get rid of them. It was here that he made Ms fatal mistake; ho entrusted the

negotiations for their sale to the talkative Gutwirth.

Gutwirth had a cousin in Paris, M. Brandstatter, a jeweller. Ho asked Brandstattcr, who had scon a notieo offering £10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolon necklace, if he would like to do some big business; and told him that the business he was referring Lo was the purchase of Mr. Mayer's pearls. Brandstatter, hearing this, at once determined to get the reward. To do that he must find out if Gutwirth 'a associates really had tho pearls. Ho called in a colleague, M. Quadradstein. who spoke English perfectly, and together, pretending to have a buyer in Paris, they went to London to see the pearls. They saw them. Grizzard himself showed them the necklace, behind tho locked doors of a London hotel.

Their next step was to see tho insurance company, which had offered the reward. The insurance company at once sent someoae, posing as a buyer, with Quadradsteirt and Brandstatter, to investigate. This "buyer" bought two of the pearls for £.3000, and took them at once to Mr. Mayer, who identified them as his. After that it was not long before the police, following Grizzard, Lockett, and the two others to the British Museum Tube Station, where they were to meet the alleged buyers, had tho master criminal, at last, in their hands. PEABI.S FOUND. It did not take Grizzard long to realise, once the trial had begun, that the police had all the evidence that they needed, and more. Witness after witness confirmed his guilt. His one mistake—entrusting important affairs to the talkative Gutwirth—had proved his undoing. He must have realised then, in spite of his quickly-made fortune, that crime in tho long run, does not pay. And what bitter reflections he must have had when the workmen who had found tho pearls, and taken them to the police, told his story in Court! The man had been going to work one morning during tho Police Court trial of the four thieves when he found a little brown paper parcel in the gutter. Curiously he picked it up. Unwrapping the paper, he found a little wooden box; and inside the box the famous £135,000 pearls. He did not know what they wero worth. There is a story that he thought so little of them that he tried to bargain them at a nearby hotel for a glass of beer. Eventually he took them to the police station. The jury, when the Judge summed up, did not hesitate for more than an hour or so. "Guilty" was the verdict. The Judge sentenced Grizzard and Lockett to seven years each; Silverman to five years; and Gutwirth to IS months. It was not expected that Grizzard would survive his term. He was never a strong man. But he came out of prison healthier than when he went in; and immediately he took up his career of crime.

This time, however, the police were ready for him. He was sentenced to a year in gaol for complicity in a £20,000 jewel theft. Soon after he had been released he died.