“QUEEN OF SHOPLIFTERS.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 January 1929, Page 8

“QUEEN OF SHOPLIFTERS.”

A DINNER. SERVICE STOLEN. FIFTY UMBRELLAS FROM ONE, SHOP. Not many of . the honorary titles borne by criminals have a better justification than that of .“Queen of Shoplifters,” now conferred by the German public on Dora Roeber.

The 'iast time this dexterous woman was before the Berlin courts her long list of exploits: indiuded the theft of an entire dinner service of 120 pieces, which she and a family gang, organised, trained and directed by her, managed to secret and carry out some big stores under the very noses of the attendants. At that time isbe lived in a luxurious flat in the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm, and almost every day carried out raids on the West End shops with the assistance of her sisters, daughters, and daugliters-in-law. Brought up at the Dutch Court, where her father had a high official post, she had no difficulty in assuming the grand manner which at once disarmed the suspicions of inexperienced shopgirls, and her .sentence of five years’ imprisonment on the former occasion was the expiation of plunder of various kinds-which would almost have furnished a palace. The specific offence laid to her charge yesterday is almost as incredible as the dinner service. It is the “lifting” of no fewer than fifty umbrellas from a single shop. During the spring she and her accomplices paid frequent visits to this establishment and inspected large quantities of wares, without, however, making any purchases. Only when .-sthey had ceased to come did the of the shop notice a mysterious diminution ot her stock, and on making up her books she found that fifty umbrellas could not be accounted for.

This staggering discovery seems to have sharpened her powers of observation, for one day -she identified with ouch positiveness one of' the missing articles in the hands of a passer-by that she did not hesitate to call in the police. The bearer of the lost umbrella took a very high tone, hut as she was identified with both Dora itoeber and the unprofitable shopper of tiie spring, her indignant protests availed lier nothing.

Tiie court soitened its sentence of a year’s hard labour with the compliment that if she employ lier giits of sleight-of-hand in tailing live rabbits from other people’s clothing instead of in secreting umbrellas in her own she would probably find it a much more profitable, as well as a -saler, occupation.

On hearing the judgment, however, she exploded in an outburst of apparently uncontrollable fury, llung to- the floor a glass of water, the only movable object within her reach, poured out from foaming iips a flood of incoherent vituperation, and' finally collapsed' in violent convulsions. Only with the utmost difficulty did three stalwart warders succeed in bringing to rest lier agitated limbs and strapping lier to a stretcher, on which she was carried out of court.

This demonstration, however, did not seriously impress the onlookers, for her police • record notes that while serving her last- sentence she “took lessons” in simulation of various kinds of morbid seizures from fellow prisoners skilled in this art.