KILLED FOR NINEPENCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 714, 13 July 1929, Page 10

KILLED FOR NINEPENCE

BOY VICTIM OF GIPSY BRUTALITY ROBBERS WHO GAMBLED A number of the gipsies arrested j two years ago following reports of j wholesale murders, robberies, and ; cannibalistic orgies in Moldava Wood, on the Slovak-Hungarian border, was taken to Zsarno from Kosice recently for the reconstruction of one of the | robberies. j They described how their leader, | Alexander Filke, blackened his face, ! turned his coat inside out. and entered : a house occupied by M. Roth. Later ! the whole band played the card game j “Twenty-one” with the spoils of the ; robbery as stakes. j M. Roth told the judge that his j greatest woe was that the robbers had i forced him to light candles on the Sabbath for the first time in his life, j The murder of Ludwig Ondecko, a | 14 year ’ old boy, was also dealt with. I He was killed with an axe in a forest on May 19, and the “booty” of ! the robbers consisted of fragments of | bread and bacon, a nickel-plated j watch, and ninepence. 1 One of tiie prisoners, a deaf mute j called Paul Rybar, demonstrated in i court his ability to play “twenty-one,” ; and made three deals. The court president took part, and each time j Rybar dealt himself twenty-one.