A Notorious Bandit Arrested

Northland Age, Volume 27, Issue 52, 2 December 1927, Page 3

A Notorious Bandit Arrested

Long Story Of Crime j One of the most notorious ban- j iits in Europe, Sante Pollastri, , tn Italian, upon whose hea3 Sig- 1 tor Mussolini placed a reward, tas beer, arrested in a Parts un- ‘ lerground station. He was vanted for about ten murders and ;or some ot the most daring jewel 1 obberies commuted in France 1 tnd Italy in recent years. He - iesperalely struggled with detec- ' ives, who eventually overpow- 1 2red hitn. 1 The circumstances of Pol!astr>’s 1 rapture read l.ke a Sherlock Holmes story. The oandU was tnce reported deed, when an Itatan who escaped from the Mar-seilies-Paria exprtss blew out Ids brains on being cornered by gendarmes, and he was identified as Poilastri. Arrested on the day he att_ined his twenty-eighin birthday, Pollastri has been the head of a gang of expert safe breakers. Pollastri himself specialised in jewel robberies, and one of his most sensational exploits of recent months was a raid on a shop in the Avenue de I’Opera, when booty to the amount of £IO,OOO was secured, in spite of the fact that the most modern ant'-burg-lar devices has been fitted on the premises. He is wanted tor killing a joweilerm Milan last November, and of the murdeis with which he is charged, six were committed within the space of five days towards the end of 1920 k He shot dead two policemen in Milan when they found him ut night in a jeweller’s shop, and when he and his gang wenescaping acrojS tne frontier into France, be fired at and killed an official of the Italian Consulate at Nice. Two days later, at the funeral

>*.the victim, Pollastri coolly ap- > iared at the graveyard and shot I ad two gendarmes who closed ton him. After he had killed ui Italian policeman who had ried to arrest him when he was ir an express train leaving for Slice, Italian detectives followed li n to Mentone on a special train jut although a complete search v.is made of the train he was lupposedto be on, Poliastri could to: be found. Pollastri’s dramatic arrest was nude by three well-known Pans detectives, Inspectors VouillVc, Deslogeres, and Poulain. Pollas ;ri was recognised by one of the detectives as they were walking dong a street in the Charenne juirtbr of Paris. Following Pollastri to an underground station, the detectives th-ew themselves upon him, but he fought like- a tiger, and an automatic pistol had to be knocked from his hand before he was arrested.