POLICE BAFFLED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21431, 4 September 1931, Page 12

POLICE BAFFLED

BURGLAR ADOPTS DISGUISE DRESSED AS COLLEGE STUDENT. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, September 3. A new move to prevent detection and capture has been made by a mysterious burglar who, for two years, is believed to have been stealing money from houses in the city and suburbs. The thief’s latest step is the adoption of disguises. Last week he entered a. house wearing the clothes of a college b0y.... The incident, so far as it is known to the police, is that the occupier of a house in one, of the suburbs says he awoke one night- to find a schoolboy in his room. He was busy going through the pockets of the householder’s trousers, which had been left lying over a chair. The informant states that he sat up in bed 1 and called out, “What are you doing with those trousers? ” Wit is reported that the intruder was out of the room and away from the house like a shot, leaving what money there was behind. .. It is believed that the intruder was none other than the mysterious thief.. Confirmation, in part, has come through the report of a maid in another house who declares that she saw a boy in the grpupds on a recent night. This mystery burglar has had an. unprecedented run of luck in a succession of thefts from private houses. As he takes only money, from the houses he has proved a source of some trouble to the police. Op entering* a house he generally leaves his shoes outside, and thr.ee pairs of canvas shoes dropped in hurried flight have been found by the police.