CRIMINAL’S OFFER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1028, 19 July 1930, Page 30

CRIMINAL’S OFFER

UNSINKABLE SUBMARINE INVENTED EXCHANGE FOR LIBERTY It has just been revealed that a foreign safebreaker, who, with three others, was deported after detectives had trapped them preparing to biow the safe of a Sydney bank three years ago, sought to buy his freedom at the price of plans which he claimed were of an unsinkable submarine. The safebreaker is an electrical wizard and the plant his gang used in their assault upon giant steel doors of the bank’s vaults was admittedly the most up-to-date up till then seen in the Commonwealth. Much of it was made in Sydney. Police departments of other countries reported later that they, too, had never seen anything like it. The leader of this gang had been experimenting for years with various phases of electrical engineering. Since the submarine tragedies of tlie war he had spent long days and wearying nights upon the system he had devised for making submarines invulnerable. Born to Crime But he was evidently born to the crooked business, and after the police of the old world had made things too hot for him he shifted his stock-in-trade and his little band of evil companions to Australia. However, it was left to Inspector Pattinson and Detectives Hubert Thompson and Barratt, of Sydney police headquarters, to outshine the sleuths of other lands by thwarting the topnotchers in their first attempt in Australia. The head of the gang was very proud of his engineering accomplishments and particularly confident of the world-wide importance of his submarine idea. Through certain channels, while in prison awaiting deportation, he actually negotiated with the British Government for the transference of his secret plans iu return for immunity from punishment, imprisonment and deportation. The British Government refused to have anything to do with the scheme, perhaps tor the twofold reason that the man was a criminal and that at the moment there did not appear to be any prospect of war. The fact that naval parleys were even at that time being held by the nations of the world also probably had something to do with the rejection of the scheme.