FOR DEVIL’S ISLAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22628, 20 July 1935, Page 2

FOR DEVIL’S ISLAND

Nearlv three years after the tragic death of Mr Donald Ross, the wealthy Versailles business man from Glasgow, three men who killed him have been sentenced to 20 years’ penal servitude. They must serve their sentences in the French Guiana penal settlement of " Devil's Island” fame. But for an incident in

prison (says the Daily Mail) the crime might never have been solved. The men are Rene Anchisi, aged 27, an Italian, Pierre Guilleminot, aged 24, and Serge Sauvageot, both Swiss, and they were charged with culpable homicide and robbery with violence. They were hustled from the dock shouting abuse at the jury. “ We'll never forget your 'mugs’; you’ll hear from us on our return from Guiana,” cried Anchisi, the alleged leader of the gang, shaking his fist amid uproar. He had to be carried bodily from the court. Their trial for the

I killing of Mr Ross had been delayed ! owing to legal procedure. Mr Roes, the SG-year-old Continental representative of a Belfast firm, was found dead in the sitting room of his villa at Maisons Laffitte in 1952 by big son, Mr Richard Ross, who, returning home unexpectedly during the absence in Scotland of his mother, discovered his father bound hand and foot with the leadin wrenched from his wireless set. The house had been ransacked. The case looked like being classified with unsolved mysteries until a warder

at the prison of St. Julien-en-Genevoise —where the three men were detainee! for a series of burglaries—one day caught Sauvageot passing to Guilleminot at exercise a note bearing the words, “ Don’t forget that you were not in Paris on September 16. . . .” Then they confessed that it was .they who killed Mr Ross. All three were well-spoken and smartly-dressed when they appeared in court. They said they met Mr Ross at the Gare St. Lazare, in Paris. He was intoxicated, and railway employees asked them to see that he

alighted at Maisons Laffitte Station. They had taken the last train with the object of carrying out a burglary at j Mantes, but, considering Mr Ross an easy victim, changed their plans and accompanied him home. There Mr Ross imprudently invited them to take refreshment. When lie was still more inebriated, they demanded ; money, and when he refused fell upon him. After a desperate struggle they bound him with wire from the wireless, stuffed a gag in his mouth, and left.

When his son came home next day Mr Ross had died of asphyxia. References to Mr Donald Ross a role in the British Intelligence Service were made bv the public prosecutor, who declared that the investigations into his death began in an atmosphere of mystery and drama.