STREET MURDER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22052, 7 September 1933, Page 11

STREET MURDER

A SYDNEY TRAGEDY THIEF’S FATAL BLOW (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 31. One minute he was an ordinary thief, engaged in robbing clothes lines —a snowdropper to use the term applied by the police—and the next he was a murderer, sought for high and low in the city of Sydney. Such is a summary of one of the most amazing crimes in Sydney’s history • —a crime in which fate played the queerest of hands.

A colourful hero of the Great War, Jules Booty, who as captain in a crack Italian regiment bore a charmed life on the battlefields, is dead ns the result of a chance blow on the jaw received while he was engaged in a chase. lie was a Frenchman by birth, but he had lived most of his life in Italy. Just after midnight on Monday, Mrs Boccy, of Italian parents, but born in New Caledonia, noticed that several articles had disappeared from the line in the yard of her home. Then she saw a man leaning over the wall and reaching, out towards the clothes that were drying. She called her husband, who ran out and confronted the thief. “ I wasn’t doing anything,” said the man. “ I was only looking over the wall.” Boccy then said he would call the police, and the stranger fled. In a second Boccy had vaulted the wall and dashed after him. The two had not raced far when the fugitive realised that he had little chance of escape. He turned and struck a blow which caught Boccy under the jaw. Boccy became unconscious and was found in that state by his wife a few minutes later. He was taken to hospital, but he died a few hours later. Mrs Boccy is a particularly attractive woman and she collapsed when she was told of her husband’s death. The couple were devoted to each other, having been married in Sydney about eight years ago. Boccy was an accomplished linguist, and he enlisted with the Italian Army soon after war had been declared. He had a distinguished career as a soldier against the Austrians, and reached the rank of captain.