HOTEL THIEVES' MODERN METHODS.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 March 1920, Page 10

HOTEL THIEVES' MODERN METHODS.

A SERGEANT-MAJOR'S LOOT. A man giving the name of Edward Shelley, a moving picture actor, wlio Ims served two terms of imprisonment, and who served throughout the war as a sergeant-major in a Canadian infantry battalion, when lie was wounded si?j times, described to the detectives of the Police headquarters bow, during the last six months, he had robbed every big hotel in New York, securing loot to the value of £50,000. As a result of the information given by Shelley, the police visited two apartments in a fashionable quarter of the city and there found a profusion of rings, watches, bracelets, necklaces, furs, costly gowns, and other valuables. There were also 141 pawntickets, representing jewels worth as much as the rost of the loot put together. Describing his methods, Shelley said that he used to put up at an expensive hotel with an accomplice. They would find out details concerning wealthy guests, and, before the latter had been in the hotel long enough to be known by sight to the office clerks, one of the two would ask for the keys of the prospective victims' room, as though it belonged to him, and rifle the room at leisure while the legitimate occupant was absent. ,