HISTORIC RELICS STOLEN

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 229, 22 June 1921, Page 4

HISTORIC RELICS STOLEN

A thief who stole Napoleonic relics from the General Joachim Murat collection in Bologna City Museum' has been captured in Milan. Railway detectives had noticed that a young ex-infantry officer, Fedele Buracci, had been indulging in repeated suspicious Sittings to and from Bologna. They raided his flat, and the ex-officer confessed to having concealed ihimsclf inside thcT museum at nightfall, with an accomplice, whose identity ho declined to reveal. One packet of the Murat jewels was discovered later at the flat, and another was stuffed in the tubing of the kitchen stove at a suburban house he often visited. , ~ . Nevertheless, it seems quite clear that the principal Murat treasures, which were worth .£45,000, besides various cases of gold end silver decorations amounting to another .£15,000, have lost for ever their unique historic value lhe best part is already broken up, melted down, or dispersed. A few articles have been traced to a goldsmith’s at Bologna, and about < lb. weight, in the shape of pure gold bars, seized from a Monza, pawnbroker, who bought Murat’s gold-handled sword, and scabbard, after the jewel settings; had. been detached, for a trifle oyer JllOOO, put them in the melting pot, find arranged for the resale of the fused meta for a paltry profit of £BO.