BETRAYED BY TATTOO

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 September 1929, Page 10

BETRAYED BY TATTOO

BATHER’S FATAL ERROR. An extraordinary story as to how a dangerous gang of criminals was brought to justice because each of them bore a distinctive tattoo mark on his back is being related by Dr. Edmond Locard, the famous director of the Lyons police technical laboratory. “I was sitting in my laboratory one day when a young workman, whom I knew slightly, dashed in and exclaimed excitedly, “I think I can help you to catch some crooks,’ ” says Dr. Locard.

“As soon as he had recovered his breath the man described a strange experience he had just had. He had been tattooed, lie said, and while bathing in the. Rhone River at Lyons he noticed another youth studying the marks on his back.

“After a while the youth came up to him and whispered, ‘The'Master told me to tell you that we are going to make a big haul to-night, and that you must be at the cottage at eleven, sharp. The gang will be there. The young workman realised that he had been mistaken for some one else, and that there was some dirty work afoot. He was smart enough to give the youth a rendezvous at a disreputable bar at 7 o’clock that night and then to tell me about it.

“Three policemen and I went to the bar and arrested the boy who thought he had recognised my informant’s tattoo marks. He was the yotingest recruit of a gang of burglars. Their chief was a most dangerous man called ‘The Master,’ and the gang itself was known in the underworld as the men with ‘The Eighteen Tattoo Marks,’ as every one of them had been sufficiently stupid as to have 18 different designs pricked in their shoulders. “The chief knew that one of his men was bathing in the river that day and had sent the recruit with instructions, saying he could easily recognise his fellow-gangster by the decorative devices on his body. “We laid a trap that night in a handsome villa that was to be robbed, and when they broke in we pounced on them. I have their photos in our museum now. Every one of them has the 18 fatal marks.” Dr. Locard mentions that there is now a great vogue among criminal classs in France to be “dettattoed,” as they have discovered that this fancy decoration helps the police to identify them.