MYSTERY MAN

Wairarapa Daily Times, 29 December 1931, Page 5

MYSTERY MAN

AN IDENTITY PUZZLE CELEBRATED ITALIAN CASE. 9 Press Association Electric Telegraph Copyright ROME, Monday. By a majority of 8 votes to 7 the High Court has decided that the mystery man in the celebrated Canella case is a criminal, Bruncri. The decision means that Bruncri will face charges of fraud and forgery while allegedly posing as Canella.

(In May last this amazing case, which has been drawn out for four years, entered its closing stage. The mystery which baffled criminologists and psychologists was whether a man who had lost his memory was Professor Canella, who was missing in war time, or a notorious criminal, Marie Bruncri, who had escaped from prison. In the early part of 1925 a man who had lost his memory was received into a mental hospital in Piedmont. Nothing seemed to penetrate the mists which obscured his mind. He seemed to be a cultured person. A gentleman of Verona saw a photograph of the man in a newspaper and believed he recognised him as Professor Canella, a scholar and teacher of philosophy in Verona, who was posted as missing while lighting on the Macedonian front in 1917. Professor Canella’s wife and relatives and ffiends then went to the hospital, and after various tests were made the authorities allowed him to lcavo the hospital and his jubilant wife took him back to his family. But a little later an anonymous letter was sent to the Turin police, stating that the supposed professor was really a compositor named Bruneri, who had been convicted three times for fraud. A fresh examination of the man was then made at the mental hospital and his linger prints were found to be identical with Bruneri’s. Next Bruneri’s wife identified him as her husband, as did his friends and acquaintances. The man himself said he was Professor Canella. He has bodily marks identical with those possessed by Bruneri and Canella. On the other hand, Signora Canella’s positiveness that he was her long-lost husband was supported by the evidence of the Bishop of Verona and many lawyers. The Court of Appeal in May decided that the man was Bruneri, who would have to serve eight years of his unfinished sentence. Meanwhile lie has lived with Signora Canella and they have two young children. Signora Canella said she did not intend to give up the fight. She announced that she would have final recourse to the highest tribunal in Italy. The case already had cost Professor - Canella’s father £SOOO. The latest message gives the decision of the final tribunal).