BLOOD FEUD WIPED OUT

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 June 1928, Page 2

BLOOD FEUD WIPED OUT

OUTLAW DOMINATES DISTRICT. People of the Sardinian town of Pietra di Arzana, in Italy, have hardly done celebrating their liberation from the clutches of the brigand Stocchino, who was recently killed in a fight with Carabineers. For three years the district below the Nuroro Mountains, where he secreted himself, had been dominated by this outlaw. Stocchino had declared a feud against the family of Nieddu; it began with some of Nieddu’s sheep grazing on the Stocchino meadows. Since then Stocchino had thought of nothing else than killing off all the members of the Nieddu family. Having lured Pompilio Nieddu to the lone heights, he bound and tortured him before putting him out of liis misery.

After seven such murders, Stocchino, was still uncaught. He forced the peasants to bring him food and notify him when the police were on his track. Death was the penalty if they failed in shielding him. Only recently his last crime was committed. Three children were playing by the roadside. A man in a velvet hunting suit came down the hill-side. He asked the children if they were daughters of Antonio Nieddu. Two of them replied “No,” as they had recognised the implacable enemy of their family; bud the child of seven replied “Yes.” He shot her and stabbed her as the sign of his vendetta. When the authorities offered £2OOO ftfr the capture of this man, Stocchino’s note of defiance, in reply, was mysteriously posted on the municipal buildings at Arzana. It warned one more official that his day of doom would be on a certain date. At last, military detectives disguised themselves as shepherds and peasants. Hearing nothing, the brigand thought that the coast was clear, and on the morning chosen for the murder of the warned official he sauntered at dawn down the trail towards Arzana. Imagine his surprise when he saw himself surrounded by a group of peasants, not one of whom he knew.

Ho turned and ran, leaping over boulders and rocks. He knew of secret paths and hollow trees where he could hide; but, no matter what way he turned, there were always strange peasants waiting.

A bullet hit him in the foot, and he could run no further. So he decided to tight it out. He raised his gun; but, before he could shoot a military policeman shot him dead.