AFTER FIVE YEARS

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12538, 30 August 1926, Page 6

AFTER FIVE YEARS

BULLION ROBBERY RECALLED SUSPECT ARRESTED FOR SMUGGLING IDENTIFIED BY FINGER PRINTS By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Australian lino N.Z. Cable Association. (Received August 29, 5.5 p.m.) SAN DIEGO, August 28. Placiile Joseph Ducrest, aged 35, who was arrested on the Mexican border on July loth, and charged with smuggling aliens into the United States, was identified to-day by finger-prints as the man who has been sought since November 22nd, 1921, as the robber of the Oceanic liner Sonoma, when sovereigns to the value of 125,000 dollars were stolen while the ship was en route from Sydney to San Francisco. Tlie gold which was insured, was loaded in Sydney, and shipped by the Commonwealth Dank to the International Banking Corporation of San Francisco. Ducrest was quartermaster on the Sonoma at the time of the robbery. He was arrested then by the San Francisco police, but escaped, and had been sought ever since. Although the theft was not discovered before the ship’s arrival in S’an Francisco, the police there believe that tho bullion, wliich was in five boxes, was removed before the Sonoma reached Honolulu. The thieves filed the locks of the specie tanks, and replaced them with duplicate locks, to hide the theft. » Inspector Kuykendahl announced here to-day that if Ducrest is acquitted on the charge of smuggling aliens he will be handed over to the San Francisco authorities for questioning in connection with the robbery aboard tho Sonoma. Ducrest denies the robbery. He said he had been employed ns bnr-tender at Tijuana since 1919. Identification experts declare that ‘Duorest’s handwriting, photographs, and fingerprints tally exactly with ‘■hose of the Sonoma robber.