Remarkable Gold Robbery.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXII, Issue 6811, 9 February 1897, Page 4

Remarkable Gold Robbery.

THE WEIBERG SENSATION,

Apropos of the recent mysterious robbery of 5000 sovs. from the Oceana, between Sydney and Melbourne, the Age recalls the remarkable robbery nearly 20 years ago of 5000 sovs. from the P. and O. Company's steamer China, which forms one of the most extraordinary chapters in the annals of crime. Martin Weiberg, the man who abstracted 5000 sovs. from the China, was a ship's carpenter, and had made careful preparations for his attack upon the bullion stowed away in the strong room. He had supplied himself with special tools for cutting all round the seals affixed to the boxes containing the gold, and by these openings he abstracted the sovereigns and afterwards carefully replaced :he seals and portions of the- boxes to which they were attached. The job was so neatly done as to entirely escape detection until the steamer reached Galle (Ceylon), aud 011 the 4tli of September, 1577, the police of Melbourne first obtained intimation of the robbery. The cold had been forwarded by the Oriental Bank at Sydney, and sent on to Melbourne in the coastal steamer Avoca and thence transhipped to the R.M.S. China. For some time it was not known whether the sovereigns had been stolen during the voyage of the Aroca from Sydney to Melbourne or after the boxes had been placed on board the China. The chief officer and the carpenter of the China, Martin Weiberg, were discharged. There the matter rested until Octobei - , 1878, when Weiberg, who had in the meantime settled down on a selection 011 the Tarwin (Vic. was arrested. Over 200 sovereigns were found in his possession. After his discharge Weiberg married a barmaid, and turned farmer in the wild regions of the Tarwin River. He might have succeeded in escaping from the clutches of the law but for a quarrel with his wife, who had learned his secret, and after the quarrel communicated it to her mother, who in turn confided it to the police. Weiberg had displayed great ingenuity in securing his plunder, having placed 1000 sovereigns in a tin of lat, which he stored at Port Melbourne, and some of the gold was placed inside an ordinary carpenter's wooden plane, which had been specially hallowed ouc for the purpose. This plunder was quite accidentally discovered hy tho detectives in handling Weiberg's tools, when the weight of the wooden plane immediately arrested attention. In various ingenious plants, one being an auger hole bored into the trunk of a tree, some 200 sovereigns in all were discovered corresponding with those stolen, which all had for tho reverse a wreath instead of the St. George and the Dragon stamp. Weiberg was brought up to Melbourne Tor trial, and, in a moment of apparent repentance, CONFESsEK GL'ILT, and offered to show tho police where a parcel of 1700 or 1800 sovereigns was sunk in the Tarwin river. There is every reason to believe that Weiberg on this occasion pirtly described the actual hiding place, fur his description of the spot when in gaol was fount 1 , to correspond in detail to the locality to which he afterwards took the police. Weiberg stated that he had scaled up the sovereigns in a tin kettle, and sunk them at a point between a conspicuous gum tree on one bank and a clump of tea-tree on the other. These were found by the three detectives who accompanied Weiberg. While they were dragging tho mud for the gold Weiberg at first worked like a nigger, and was apparently as eager as the police to recover tho spoil. On day, while two of the detectives were in the boat and a third on shore with Weiberg, the robber suddenly dealt the officer beside him

A TERRIFIC BLOW In the pit of the stomach, and made a dash for the scrub. One of the detectives tried to stop him with a shot, but the revolver missed fire. The other—one of the fastest runners in Victoria—partly recovering from the blow, started in pursuit, but Weiberg, having reached the scrub, was safe, and for some months nothing more was heard of him. Later the police learned that he had sent a sum of nearly 1000 sovereigns in Melbourne to purchase a vessel called the Spray, and this money was found secreted in a house in one of the Melbourne suburbs, and seized. The police meanwhile endured hardship searching for Weiberg. One evening, however, they saw a man at a distance approach them, and hide behind trees. It was Weiberg, who, getting within 50 yards of them, caught a glimpse of one of the officers, and immediately made A DA-H FOR THE WATER, Jumping down a cliff some 14ft high to reach it. Constables Edelston and Taylor got within range before he could swim far, and both fired, Taylor's bullet cutting the water about a foot in front of him, and this so startled the robber, fine as was his nerve, that he at once turned shoreward again, shouting, " I give up." The arrest took place close to the high rocks on Mount Patterson, known as the Eagle's Nest. Weiberg afterwards boasted of his cleverness in blotting out his tracks, and said it was his custom when walking along the shore to do so only at low water, and the next rising tide blotted away all traces. The plants chosen by him were unique, a servant girl, who lived with Weiberg and his wife, stating at the trial that she once discoved a lot of sovereigns planted in a bar of soap. Weiberg got JIVE YEABS KOR THE THEFT. And having served it returned to Gippsland. He was known afterwards to have bought a boat, subsequently found capsized at sea. Thus the daring gold robber, ,vho for a time was in the eyes of the criminal classes a hero second in importance only to the blood guilty Kelly gang, was no sooner free that the fate he had so dared in swimming Anderson's Inlet overtook him, and the robber and possibly his gold went down at sea. The particulars of his death were vague enough to establish in many minds the conviction that Weiberg lived and got away with a share of the spoil, for little more than a thousand sovereigns in all were recovered.