BURGLARY STORY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 639, 17 December 1932, Page 27 (Supplement)

BURGLARY STORY.

Girl Implicate* Innocent Men. (Special to the “Star.’*) LONDON, November 5. A girl who invented a story of a holdup by armed men was placed on probation at Birmingham Police Court, when she was charged with theft. She was Melissa Spires, twenty-two, employed at a house in Dyotts Road, Moseley. Detective Inspector Vince said that the girl telephoned the police that she had been held up by an armed burglar, and that jewellery and money valued at between £3O and £4O had been stolen. Fourteen detectives and policemen were sent to the house. Spires told them that she noticed, when she returned to the house, an electric torch being flashed in an upstairs room, and when she entered two men rushed downstairs, held her up with a revolver, and then dashed from the house.

A search of the house revealed that the window had been broken from inside, and that a wardrobe had been opened with a key. The girl’s description of the two men appeared to be too minute. She later admitted that the missing articles were hidden in the garden, where they were found. A serious element was that her description of the two men actually corresponded. with that of two men who might have been arrested had not the truth been discovered.