GRAVEYARD GHOULS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 30 May 1914, Page 9

GRAVEYARD GHOULS.

"The ghouls of Pere Lachaise" is (says the Paris correspondent of the Standard on March 31) the title Paris has given to an audacious band of thieve*- who for over three years are said to have made a. good livelihood by violating and plundering tombs in the famous cemetery and other graveyards of the capital. Four persons suspected of being the leaders of the gang have already been arrested, and it is expected that eight more will be shortly captured by the police, not counting various dealers in "objets dart" who are believed to have acted as receivers.

Since December 15, 1913, no fewer than 78 vaults in Pere Lachaise have been broken into and robbed, valuable vases, silver candlesticks, statuettes of saints, and various other articles being carried off. Not three weeks ago the big vault of the Hauboy family was entered, and by the light of a little lamp that burns night and day on the altar there the *rhouls selected the most precious objects that met their gaze. A doy or two before the cemetery chapel was robbed of a, massive silver ciborium and the poor-box in the porch smashed open and emptied. The same gang are also credited with the profanation of the tomb of the wellknown actress Mile. Lantelme, the wife of M. Edwards, founder of the Matin, who was drowned in the Rhine. The. desecration of a tomb a day has been the average, record since the beginning of the year.

The arrest of the gang was due to one of their number talking too unguardedly about future plans. Attention had first been drawn to the man by the fact that detectives had 6een him wandering: round the cemetery and unostentatiously making ' little marks on tombs that seemed to promise good booty, and that the next day those tombs had been opened and rifled. He was put under surveillance by the police and one day he was overheard talking.to a companion in..a bar.

"The tomb of the Marquis Casa Riera ought to be a good one to tackle." he is said to have remarked.

His coir pan ion suggested that the vault of the Chauchard family would be better.

"There are 6ft of concrete to be got through." "Very well, then" —the police listeners heard —"let us do the Casa Riera'tomb at-once. We ought also to think about the silver r>alm wreath in Calmette's tomb." ; .'i ' But the ghouls were not destined to break into the tomb of tVie Marquis de Casa Riera. or carry off the silver wreath in memorial of the Figaro's murdered editor;, for the police only stayed their hand to arrest as many as "they could at once, and now four of them—one of them the sculptor; Goslin. a blacksmith; the latter'® mistress, and a man named Doxiblet —are safely under lock and key, where probably'they will be shortly joined by their comrades in crime.