GYPSY ORGIES

Hokitika Guardian, 13 July 1929, Page 3

GYPSY ORGIES

VIENNA| May .The trial of 101 gypsies arrested following reports of cannibal practices in Moldava; V 7 ood, on the' HungarianSlovak frontier;-was. continued to-day at Kosice. Cannibalism is outside the provisions of the Czecho-Slovak legal code, and the actual charges are of hiurder and other serious offences. . 1 M. Janecsek; :a prison director, said to-day that the prisoners bad given many false directions as to where the human bones were (buried for the purpose of-obtaining a day in the country. Eventually a woman came to Kosice, and revealed the . burial place. M. Mihaly Balfyy a prison-inspector, declared that the arrested gypsies bad eagerly volunteered information. Some-of them'said to him,“- “We cut i.ie bodies up, stewed them and ate them with potatoes.” David Roth, an aged Jewish shopkeeper of Zsarno village, said 'be awoke on an evening in July 1925 to find two men standing in the twilight near his sofa. One placed a table knife to his brejist, demanding his '■ money. They took £3O from under a mattress, forced him to unlock the door of bis sitting room—they bad entered by a window—and vanished. Thev did not in hire him, but the fright destroyed bis health, and lie is now a erinple. Alexander Filke, the young leader of the gypsy band, who is accused of several murders, is stated to have confessed this robbery to the police, but now denies it. Roth is oresumablv the onlv survivor among a large number robbed by the gang. The exahnining magistrate, Dr Kreiss. related in bis evidence liow lie asked Filke why bo murdered so manv people and bow- Filke replied be did not know wliv there were so" many useless people in the world.