DRUG SMUGGLERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23082, 7 January 1937, Page 2

DRUG SMUGGLERS

CHINESE GIRL’S STORY “I was the dupe of narcotic smugglers,” declared Miss Maria Wendt, the Chinese girl who is awaiting trial at Los Angeles on a charge of smuggling £IO.OOO worth of heroin into the country. Revelations of the activities of an international narcotics ring, which followed the suicides of N, LoffenholzBrandstatter, a handsome young Pole, well known in Shanghai night life, and of A 1 Stey, formerly superintendent of a German hospital in Shanghai, have stirred the girl into telling her own version of the strange story. When Brandstatter left Shanghai for the United States, Stey, according to her story, told her to go with him as her nurse, and arranged her passage, but when she got on board she found no patient. While at sea she received a radiogram from Stey saying Brandstattter would reach the United States before her. Expressing great surprise at the American Customs agents’ story of Stey’s death, Miss Wendt said, “I had no idea that 541 b of heroin found at the bottom of my trunk had been secreted there.”