DEVIL’S ISLE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3895, 28 April 1937, Page 4

DEVIL’S ISLE

FUGITIVE TO DIE. SHOT AT POLICEMAN. Armand Jean Spilers, France's King - of Jail-breakers, who twice broke free from Devil’s Island, was sentenced tc death at Pau for shooting a policeman. Throughout the trial armed warders kept guard over him. They knew his amazing record. In 1925, disguised as a warder, he walked out of Loos prison, Belgium. Ihe following year he was sent to Devil’s Island. In 1929 he escaped, but was recaptured. Three years later, with five others, he escaped again, reaching the South American coast in a small boat. With another man he arrived in Venezuela; the others died on the way. Amassing - a fortune in Venezuela he returned to France as M. Dupony, and became a horse-owner. He tired of that and was about to retire when he quarrelled with a man. Again he was arrested and his real identity disclosed.

They put him ip the Sante Prison in Paris. He climbed over the hign walls and was free again. Then a. series of burglaries on the Basque coast puzzled the authorities. A policeman surprised two thieves at St Jean de Luz. One was Spilers. He shot the policeman. He was imprisoned at Bayonne, but sawed through the bars, clambered along a ledge to a waiting motorcycle and freedom. Finally he was recaptured. This time he was given no chance. He was kept under a heavy guard—chained and manacled.