Paris Robbery Leads To New Caledonian

Court

AFTER eight years, justice caught up with Raymond Dubois in a New Caledonian court recently. He was a member of a small film unit visiting the Colony.

His trial, which has aroused great in terest in New Caledonia, resulted in a verdict of guilty; the charge was one of theft.

He was sentenced to two years im prisonment, with expulsion from the Colony for a period of ten years.

The whole thing reads like a page from a French novel, for the act for which he was found guilty took place in Paris, and a special witness brought from France, was a police inspector, and fingerprint expert named de Massiac. The date of the crime was November 14, 1941.

Towards 10 o’clock on that night, a young woman was charged by a Paris tailor named Charles Gliksmann to look after his business while he was away on service. Later, she thought she saw a light on the first floor. She called the police who found the place in great disorder, and many rolls of cloth miss ing. A hole had been made in the plaster wall, rolls of cloth had been un rolled on the floor to deaden sound, and a hole gaped in the ceiling of the shop.

After a thorough examination, the police were able to report that finger prints on an empty bottle found in the place were those of Dubois who had been convicted of theft in 1936 and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment. But Dubois had completely disappeared.

Dubois, in the New Caledonion Court, denied the charge, saying that at the

time of the theft he had been living with a woman who owned a bar in the neighbourhood of Les Halles (the Covent Garden market area of Paris). He claimed that the bottle with his finger prints must have been taken by the thieves to the tailor’s, but that he had had nothing to do with the theft.

The Paris police reported that Dubois was a man of doubtful morals, that he had lived on women and had run a number of brothels (maisons closes).

During his speech for the prosecution, the New Caledonian Avocat General said that he would do all in his power to purify the New Caledonian air of a number of gangsters from the metropolis who were seeking refuge in the Colony.