"MASKED WOMEN"

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19827, 29 April 1927, Page 7

"MASKED WOMEN"

WERE THEY REAL? MELBOURNE DETECTIVES SCEPTICAL. MELBOURNE, April 26. The detectives are not satisfied with the story of a young woman not long arrived from England, who alleges that she was held up last night in her house by three armed and masked women. The woman said that at midnight she was sitting in a chair when three armed women entered. One of them held a revolver to her head. They bound her to the chair and then tried to force her to drink some poison. The masked women were standing about her forcing her to drink when there was a knock at the doer, and the women ran out through the back of her house and disappeared. The victim further alleged that they robbed her of £4. To-day the detectives examined the glass that contained the supposed poison, and they found that tho ingredients had been taken from a jar in the kitchen. The woman said that her neighbours had released her and that the bonds had cut into her wrists. Today there were no marks of violence to be seen, and neighbours said that they had seen no women come to the house or leave it, and they had heard nothing unusual. The complainant said to-day that she believed one of the women in the party last night was identical with one who knocked at her front door at midnight recently and threw a mixture containing pepper and eucalyptus oil into her eyes and escaped in a motor car. That incident was reported to the police.