AMERICAN NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 12 November 1927, Page 3

AMERICAN NEWS

GEM SMUGGLING

DETECTED BY CUSTOM AGENTS.

(Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.)

NEAV YORK, Nov. 9. An unusual scheme lor the smuggling of diamonds into the United States was uncovered by keen-e.ved Customs agents, who noticed a man named La mot, second electrician of the liner Lapland, wearing shoes apparently several sizes too large for him when the latter left the ship at the Pier here to-day. It was discovered that the heels and toes of the shoes contained compartments holding 100,000 dollars worth of these jewels. Lainot was put under surveillance, Government - agents then distributed gerns to the principals, and five men and one woman were arrested, and are being held on 210,000 dollars hail, charged with conspiracy to-smuggle in about 1,000,000 dollars’ worth of diamonds. The Government agents state that actually several million dollars’ worth of gems have been smuggled by this group, which, with headquarters in Antwerp, worked out an intricate system of avoiding the Customs. Other arrests are expected.

SUICIDE IX CEMETERY. NEW YORK, X»v. 11. At. Plainfield, New Jersey, within nn hour yesterday, two elderly lonely men whose wives had died, committed suicide near their graves, in a local cemetery, where the body of one of them, Samuel Kabouoher. aged fiftyeight, whose wife had been dead three years, was found a. few feet from the headstone. He used a shotgun. The superintendent of the cemetery on coming back after making arrangements to send the body to the morgue came upon Albert Randolph, sixty, who had come to visit the grave of his wife, who had died two years ago. He told the latter nothing of the first suicide, but shortly afterwards was summoned by an employe'' who had found Randolph dead, as a result of a bullet through the brain from an old fashioned pistol.