IDENTITY UNCERTAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20863, 4 May 1931, Page 9

IDENTITY UNCERTAIN.

PROFESSOR OR CRIMINAL

STRANGE CASE IN ITALY. MAN WITH LOST MEMORY. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received May 3, 5.5 p.m.) FLORENCE. May '2. An amazing case which has been drawn out for four years is again prominent. The, mystery which baffled criminologists and psychologists was whether a man who bad lo.st his memory was Professor Canella, who was missing in war time, or a notorious criminal, Mario Driineri, who had escaped from prison. Signora Canella's posit iveness that he was her long-lost husband was supported by the evidence of the Bishop of erona and many lawyers. Similarly, Signora Uruneri's certainty that the man was her husband was supplemented by police finger-prints. The Court of Appeal has decided that the man is Bruneri, who will now serve eight years of his unfinished sentence. Meanwhile he has lived with Signora Canella and they have two young children. Signora Canella does not intend to give up the fight. She announces that she will have final recourse to ttin highest, tribunal in Italy. The case has already cost Professor Canella's father £SOOO.

In the early part of 19-5 a man who had lost his memory was icceivcd into a mental hospital in Piedmont. Nothing seemed (o penetrate (lie mists which obscured his mind, 110 seemed to be a cultured person. A gentleman of Verona saw a photograph of the man in a newspaper and believed ho recognised him as Professor C'anella, a scholar and teacher (if philosophy in Verona, who was posted as missing while fighting on the. Macedonian front in 1917. Professor Canclla's wife and relatives and friends then went to the hospital and after various tests were made the authorities allowed him to leave the hospital and his jubilant wife took him hack to his family. But a little later an anonymous letter was sent, to the Turin police, staling that the supposed professor was really a compositor named Bruneri, who had been convicted three times for fraud. A fresh examination of the man was then made at the mental hospital and his fingerprints were found to lie. identical with Bruneri's. Then Bruneri's wife identified him as her husband, as did his friends and acquaintances. , The man himself said he was Professor Oanella. lie has bodily marks identical with those, possessed by Bruneri and Oanella.