AN ECCENTRIC BURGLAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16128, 17 January 1916, Page 7

AN ECCENTRIC BURGLAR.

THEFTS IN WELLINGTON. CURIOUS CHOICE OF ROOTY. I'DT rai'jiurH. —OWN correspondent.! Wellington. Sunday. An eccentric burglar has been operating in Wellington for about six months. In several ways he is eccentric. He has been known to spend time and energy in forcing a door to set into a house when a few feet away was an open window. In houses into which he has broken ho makes a curious choice of tilings to steal Quito laboriously he will possess himself of a pair of nine carat sleeve-links and pass over a valuable gold watch. He never enters any buildings but private houses, and usually he is busy quite early in the niirht. The authorities are utterly at a Ws. This unknown thief escapes all the usual burglar traps, an 3 now it is practically accepted as a- certainty that ho cannot; bo caught until somebody takes him red-handed. There are various theories as to tho sort of man this burglar will prove to be. Some hold the opinion that he is a crazy maniac, • ■'hers that he is a less crazy simpleton v.- ho has taken up a crime as a diversion. Me is at any rate the worst burglar as a tradesman that has ever plundered. In s"me house he has done damage to doors and furnishings with his chisels and other tools which has cost more to repair than it would cost to replace the goods he has :-i"len. Some of his freaks seem to suggest mere mischief. He has been known to discover, no doubt at considerable pains, a bunch of keys which would have given him access to booty of considerable value and to leave., the booty undisturbed and co off with the keys. But he does not make the usual mistakes by which burg'ars and other thieves are caught.