ITALY’S PROBLEM MAN

Taranaki Daily News, 1 February 1933, Page 10

ITALY’S PROBLEM MAN

PROFESSOR OR CRIMINAL?

The recent amnesty rings down the curtain upon the final act of one of those human comedies which stir the public from time to time. For several years Italy has been tom into two parties over a problem of identity which has been brought before every possible tribunal by the Crown and the defendant.

Was the man who found his way into a public lunatic asylum near Turin the cultured and erudite Professor Canella of Verona, long believed to have been killed in the Great War? Or was he Mario Bruneri, a man of humble origin and a criminal for whom the police had been hunting for some time? Professor Canella’s widow thought she recognised her husband in the silent, bearded man who had lost his memory after being arrested in the act of stealing bronze in a Turin ceinetery. At first he did not recognise her. Then he seemed'to remember; so she took him home rejoicing. But Mario Brurieri’s family also claimed him as theirs, and supplied such evidence that he was rearrested on several charges which had been gathering up against Mario. Finger prints supported their contention that he was Mario. .

Finally, the Turin tribunals declared him to be Bruneri, and sent him to prison for five years. Thanks to the amnesty, this mysterious individual will be a free man next April. Signora Canella still declares he is her husband and the father of her children, two of whom have been bom since she found him again. On leaving prison he will return to her home at Verona, and his supporters will accept him as Professor Canella.