LEFT HIS CARD.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue 147, 9 September 1925, Page 1

LEFT HIS CARD.

A CARELESS THIEF. FOUND AFTER 18 MONTHS. SYDNEY, August 27. A theft involving £6OO, discovered only after a lapse of 18 months from the time it was committed, would have remained a. mystery, insofar as the persons who committed it were concerned, but for the discovery by the police of an innocent-looking card. Residents of a fiat at Manly, the seaside suburb of Sydney, left for a trip to England 18 months ago. They let their flat to a man and woman with the stipulation that a locked room, in which they had stored their surplus valuables, was not to be disturbed or used by the incoming tenants. Two months after the original owners of the flat had sailed for England, the new tenants gave notice and left the place, which was let again and occupied until the return of the owners this week. As soon as they arrived back they unlocked the room, to discover that it had been rifled of practically all the valuable contents, worth £6OO, and including a big stock of rare Irish linen, much cut glass and fine chinaware, dresses, and a stock of champagne and various wines. The Manly police interviewed (lie last tenants and were satisfied that they had nothing to do with the robbery, so they turned their attention to the first tenants. All they could discover about them was the name given on the lease. But this was proved to he fictitious, and the police reached a dead end. But, when they were searching through the rifled storeroom, they came across a visiting card hearing an address in the city. It was proved to have no connection with the owners of the flat, and the police set out to trace the owner of the card. He had taken several new addresses, but (hey eventually tracked him down after a week’s searching, and, as they hoped, he proved to be the man who had taken the flat when the owners went to England 18 months ago. He confessed, they say, that the “Bluebeard’s Chamber” intrigued him, and that he had taken out a pane of glass from a dormer window in the wall, and turned the key from the inside. During th two months of his occupancy he removed the whele of the contents, replaced the window, and then gave notice and left. The fact that the room had been rifled was not discovered earlier because he had replaced the window in such expert fashion that it went unnoticed until the return of the owner. Much of the property has been recovered from pawnshops and places where the man said he had sold it a few days after it was stolen. And the card was the link which forged the chain of evidence.