AMAZING DRAMA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3756, 15 May 1936, Page 8

AMAZING DRAMA

ACCUSED OF MURDER. CRIME FOR WHICH FOUR MEN WERE HANGED. Two charges of murder—for which four men have already been hanged—will after 12 years, be preferred at Montreal against Joseph Carreri, an Italian. '. ' The case involves an amazing drama, for Carreri, in setting up an alibi, has even dragged in a magistrate to testify that he was in court at certain times. The prosecution will seek to show that Carreri, who, with an associate, Arena, was before a Montreal Court on a hold-up charge, left the court during the luncheon interval, took part in a hold-up six miles away, and then returned in time to be present when the court sitting was resumed. On that particular day he was discharged. This was on April 1, 1924. At 1.50 p.m. a car full of armed gangsters waited at a certain spot for the collection car of the bank of Hochelaga. When the car appeared the gangsters opened a fussilade, killing one of the guards. Within two minutes they had riffled the car of about £28,000 and had driven off. Twenty minutes later, rhe police allege, the two Italians returned to the police Court for the hearing of their case. They had left the court at 12.15 pan. and returned at 2.10' p.m., and the murder had occurred at 1.50 p.m., six miles from the court. “Airtight” Alibi. It was not long before the police had a whisper that Carreri and Arena had taken part in this hold-up, and they were detained. Their defence was an abili, and they called upon the magistrate investigating the other case to testify to the times they were before him. The alibi was apparently “airtight," and they were released. They made at once for the United States border, and, once across, lost themselves completely—so far as the police were concerned. Twenty-four hours after they had been released the police were after them hot-foot. One of the gang had been captured, and named Carreri and Arena as two of the men who took part in the bank-car hold-up. They were not caught, but, on the information provided by the informer, four men were hanged for the crime, strapped back to baek in twos on a double scaffold. One of them was Tony Frank, the “Crime King” of Montreal, who leased shotguns to the gangsters for £2 a day and a portion of the proceeds of the robbery. Cleo at Last. For 12 years the Montreal police never forgot the fact that two suspected murderers had slipped through • their fingers. Then there came a clue from San Francisco, and on the receipt of fingerprints in Montreal they were established as those of Carreri. He was extradited. He is charged, first, with the murder of Henri Cteroux, the bank guard, and, second, with the murder of one I of his associates, Harry Stone. The gangster’s car was found one hour after the hold-up, and on it was found the body of Stone. He was a drug addict and not a regular member of the gang, and the police claim that Carreri shot him from behind on the principle that the fewer there were to share, the more there would be for the survivors. In Stone's pocket was found a telephone number, overlooked when the gangsters rifled his pockets, and this telephone number lead to the identification of the gang. The evidence against Carreri has been weakened by the disappearance of the informer, who is believed to have been shot in Italy by friends of the man he betrayed.