DARING THIEVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1928, Page 3

DARING THIEVES

OPERATING IN THREE STATES. In the third instance of its kind in the past four months’ in Melbourne, daring thieves smashed a jeweller’s window in Howie Place and escaped with a trayful of diamond rings worth £2OOO. it was the culmination of a series of daring thefts in various States. Losers by the operations of the two Melbourne thieves were Palfrey’s, jewellers, whose shop is in the very heart of the city, and is portion of an arcade in which, at the time the episode occurred, were at least fifty persons on their ordinary business. One of the men carried half a brick wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, giving it the appearance of a parcel wrapped in the ordinary manner. The plate-glass window he smashed is about 12ft. square, and the hole made measured about two feet by one foot. As soon as he had smashed the -window the first man grasped a tray, containing about 24 rings and ran out of the arcade. Only a second after him the other man put both hands through the window and caught up a larger tray, with 30 rings on it. The first thief got away beofre anyone could move, but the second was chasdd by a plumber and the caretaker of the shops. He was fieSt of foot, however, and eventually out-distanced his pursuers.

Recentity, in Sydney, there have been numerous robberies of a similarly daring character, though carried out at night.. At Double Bay a burglar entered a home while the residents were in the dining-room, ransacked the rooms upstairs, and made his escape witli £3OO worth of jewellery and clothing. An outbreak of shop robberberies is also engaging the attention of the Sydney detectives, who find themselves up against a particularly determined gang. In one instance they engaged an empty shop next a tobacconist, and at the week-end cut a hole through a 2ft. thick brick wall to steal £l5O worth of tobacco, cigars and cigarettes. Latest manifestation of their during is a robbery they committed at a tobacconist’s shop whose backyard abuts on to one of the city police stations. The same night they tore about 50 bricks out. of the back wall of anohter shop, not two blocks away, and cleaned Hie place out of £2OO worth of stock. Queensland has had a similar visitation of daring burglars, and in neither of the States have the police been aide to get the slightest clue to the identity of the gangs.