DARING THIEVES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 45, 21 January 1928, Page 4

DARING THIEVES

OPERATING IN THREE STATES. £2OOO COUP A CLIMAX. SYDNEY, Jan. 12. In the third instance of its kind in the past tour months in Melbourne, daring thieves on Tuesday smashed a jeweller’s window in Howie Place and escaped with a trayful of diamond rings worth £2OOO. It was the culmination of a series of daring thefts in various States. Losers by the operations of the two Melbourne thieves were Palfrey’s, jewellers, whose shop is in the very heart of the city, and is portion of an arcade in which, at the time the episode occurred, were at Jeast 50 persons on their ordinary business. One of the men carried half a brick wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, giving it the appearance of a parcel wrapped in the ordinary manner. The plate-glass window he smashed is about 12ft square, and the hole made measured about two feet by one foot. As soon as he had smashed the window the first man grasped a tray containing about 24 rings and ran out of the arcade. Only a second after hint the other man put both hands through the window and caught up a larger tray with 30 rings on it. The first thief got away before anyone could move, but the second was chased by a plumber and the caretaker of the shops. He was fleet of foot, however, and eventually outdistanced his pursuers.

Recently, in Sydney, there have been numerous robberies of a similarly daring character, though carried out at mght. At Double Bay a burglar entered a home while the residents were in the dining room, ransacked the rooms upstairs, and made his escape with £3OO worth of jewellery and clothing. An outbreak of shop robberies is also engaging the attention of Sydney detectives, who find themselves up against a particularly determined feang. . ' , , in one instance they engaged an empty shop next a tobacconist, and at the week-end cut a hole through a 2ft thick brick wall to steal £l5O worth of tobacco, cigars and cigarettes. Latest manifestation of their daring is a robbery they committed at a tobacconist’s shop whose backyard abuts on to one of the c.ty police stations. Tho same night they tore about 50 bricks out of the back wall of another shop, not two blocks away, and cleaned the place out of £2OO worth of stock. Queensland has had.a similar visitation of daring burglars, and in neither of the States have the police been able to get the slightest clue to the identity ol the gangs.