BIG GOLD ROBBERY

Hokitika Guardian, 30 August 1926, Page 2

BIG GOLD ROBBERY

ARREST AFTER FIVE YEARS. (Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.] NEW YORK, Aug. 28. A San Diego message states: Inspector Kuykendahl announced to-day if a prisoner, .Joseph Ducrest, who has been arrested hero on a charge of smuggling aliens, is acquitted of that charge, he will he handed over to tho San 1* raiicisco authorities for questioning in j connection with the robbery of Australian bullion aboard tho line Sonoma in 1921. Ducrest denies the robbery. He said that he had been employed as bar tender at Tijuana since 1919. Identification experts, however declare that his handwriting, photographs, and finger-, prints tally exactly with those of the Sonoma robber. DUCREST LONG SUSPECTED. VANCOUVER, Aug. 27. The man, Joseph Ducrest. whose ago is 35, was arrested on the Mexican border on the fifteenth of July, and was charged with smuggling aliens into tho United States. He was identified at San Diqgo to-day, by his finger prints, as a man who has been sought since the twenty-second of November, 1921, as the robber of the Oceanic Coy’s liner Sonoma, when sovereigns to the value of 125,000 dollars were stolen while the ship was on route from Sydney to ’Frisco. The gold was insured. It was loaded in Sydney, and was shipped by tho Commonwealth Bank to the International Banking Corporation in San Francisco. Ducrest was the Quartermaster on tin- Sonoma at the time of the robbery, lie was arrested then by the ’Frisco police, but he escaped, and he has been soughc ever since. Although the theft was not discovered before tho ship’s arrival in ’Frisco, the police there, believe that the bullion, which was in five boxes, was removed before the Sonoma reached Honolulu. The thieves filed the locks of the specie tanks, replacing them with duplicate locks to cover the theft.