FORGIVES CONVICTED CRIMINAL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 3

FORGIVES CONVICTED CRIMINAL

WILL W AIT FOR RELEASE PAINTER WHO POSED AS COUNT (By Air Mail — From a Special Correspondent) LONDON, sth June, Michael Nesteroff, twenty-five-year-cld Russian, by day a £3-a-week painter working for a London firm, by night a “man about town” sometimes posing as the Count of Covadonga, sometimes as the Marquis of Donegall-was sentenced this week at the Old Bailey to eighteen months in jail for receiving stolen goods. As he disappeared from view, a Scot-iand-yard officer slipped out of the court to send a telegram to a blonde schoolteacher from Aylesbury, Bucks, Who believed in Nesteroff, and fell in love with him. She is twenty-five years old, unusually pretty. Fler name is kept secret When she received the telegram, she commented simply; “I’m glad. I thought it would be five years, Evon so, it is a long time to wait.”

She travelled to London each weekend to see him, She did not know that the Michael Nesteroff who spent so lavishly in West End hotels wag a sneak-thief known to the Paris police She said; ‘He never posed as a nobleman to me. There was no need. I took him for what he was—a lonely young man.

“Some people did not like him because he was a foreigner, It was that antagonism that drew me to him. I was sorry for him. I fell in love with him. He was a lovable man and that s all that matters to me.

. “He used to give dinners in the West End, then go on to 'shows, spending a lot of money. “He stopped that because I would not go with him, I didn't want him to get into debt. Although he always seemed to have money, he saved nothing. “Whatever he has done, I can forgive him. And I can wait.”

Nesteroff was convicted of receiving a mink coat worth £2OO stolen from Covent Garden Opera House, and receiving a cheque book. He asked that throe other offences should be taken

into consideration. He was recommended lor deportation. Sir Holman Gregory, the City of London Recorder, said to him, "I look upon you as a dangerous criminal,''

His workmates knew Nestcrolf as a taciturn foreigner with a romantic history.

They had heard that his father was shot by the Soviet, that he himself was sentenced to five years as a counter-re-volutionary; that he escaped to Germany. with a false passport, entered Britain as a stowaway. The Russian Relief Committee have been unable to confirm this storv