GIPSY BANK THIEVES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17346, 25 August 1930, Page 2

GIPSY BANK THIEVES

PINK IN GAOL RELEASED TO SAVE THEIR LIVES BANFF, July 9. Remarkable scenes were witnessed at the Sheriff Court here to-day, when three Greek gipsies, Michael ISteris, 2d, ins wife, Alary, 19, and his brother. Stephen, 22, were found guilty of a bank robbery at Keith, and thefts from other places in Scotland. They were so ill through confinement and missing -their natural open-air lde that, they had to he brought in an ambulance, carried into the court on stretchers, and then supported in the dock by police and gipsy relatives. TO RETURN TO GREECE. The three prisoners had been kept in the open as far as possible on medical advice, as they suffered from inability to eat and extreme weakness, and a doctor’s certificate was read in court giving the opinion that further confinement in prison would place their lives in immediate danger. “A series of cunning and impudent thefts that could not be tolerated in any civilised country,” was the sheriff s description of their offences. In view, however, of the medical report, they were released with a tine of £25 on the understanding that their relatives look them back to Greece.

They were arrested on release in mi prison in England after having been found guilty of similar charges there. The bank robbery was effected by a fortune telling ruse, the woman engaging the staff's attention by reading fortunes while one of the men stole the money. The other man and a child waited in a motor car near by in which the party escaped.