MILLIONAIRESS THIEF.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6384, 5 December 1907, Page 6

MILLIONAIRESS THIEF.

"I'm naturally bad. I stole because I enjoyed to think of it.” These arc sentences (says the Now York correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph") from the amazing confession mode to the Chicago police by Mrs Romeiko, wife of a millionaire trunk manufacturer at Milwaukee. Something of the same kind had been whispered before, but the newspapers, fearful of the law of libel, hesitated to print the startling admission. Despite her wealth, automobiles,'Splendid, dresser* and costly jewels, this, millionaire's wife stands charged with robbing the homes of wealthy people of Chicago, which sho had entered under the guise of a maid or nurse. She ocasionally had a negro acr complice. Admittedly, she stole to gratify her paerion for theft, not because she wanted anything for itself, but "because of the thrill which comes from successfully planning and executing a really dangerous job." It is hardly to be wondered that the American newspapers should hare • hesitated to print her astounding narrative.

"Steal! Steal! Steal!" says the unfortunate woman, "was ringing always in my ears, night and day, and in stealing I got the same brutal satisfaction as a drunkard gets from liquor or an opium clave from hie narcotics." Her husband indulged her every whim, but to gratify her morbid passion she left him. She still had money, but she preferred to eteal; she felt it was her "life’s work," and so she stole right and left from anybody and everyb >dy, sometimes employing Machiavellian cunning. She says she bnly felt at peace when she was stealing, ""'ith each thing I took 1 felt more and more at case, but tho thrill of robbing never wore away. 1 was never so angrv *n my life," she declares, "as when I leit *tiy rings on my washstand and nobody had stolen them. It ha* left to me to discover the divine .'•jjutdon of stalling. No v 1 Live onlv to out of prison and steal 4igain. It is inhuman to keep me here." The young uttshond stands by his wife in her tri-

~nph or affliction, whatever her perverted mind calls it. He says she is uftd, and ac.ke for the dismissal of the jharyo on that ground.