“HUMAN EEL”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 6 August 1926, Page 7

“HUMAN EEL”

SEVENTEENTH ESCAPE.

AN ELUSIVE PRISONER

SENSATION FOR PARISIANS.

BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION-COPYRIGHT Received 1.40 p.m. to-day. PARIS, Aug. 5.

A well-known swindler, George Rome, whose fiction-like feats in escaping from the police have captivated the public imagination and earned him the nickname of “Human Eel,’’ effected his seventeenth escape in a sensational manner.

He was wanted on 20 charges from all over France and was recently arrested, whereupon he boasted that he should not stay long. He was taken to court with ten others, but was not handcuffed. When the goaler’s attention was distracted, ho mingled with a group of juvenile prisoners whose names had just been' called. At the door, drawing from his pocket legal documents which he had picked up, he calmly walked out. When challenged by a guard, he waved a paper, replying “Detective inspector.” He hailed a taxi and disappeared. The press recalls his former escapes, of which the most romantic was at Havre, where lie tunnelled under a wall, replacing the debris nightly in the Mon toe risto manner, till he- was ready to leave.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.