ACROBAT ROOF BURGLAR

Hokitika Guardian, 27 April 1931, Page 6

ACROBAT ROOF BURGLAR

PLANK USED AS BRIDGE. LOFTY FOURTEEN FOOT GAP. £3OOO JEWELLERY RAID. .Who is the skylight burglar. tbe daring acrobat thief who added to a series of clever West End raids by entering a jeweller’s shop in St. Martin’s Lane, Trafalgar Square, and getting away with £3OOO worth of valuables, was the question that was recently being asked in London. The circumstances suggest that the robbery was the work of several men. headed by . one of very' small stature. They first climbed. An iron fire-escape to the roof of the Coliseum Theatre and reached a:spot opposite the premises of a firm of. jewellers and pawnbrokers. There a 14ft. gap between the two roofs was bridged with a plank, and risking a fall of 40!t., they crossed the foot-wide plank to the jeweller’s roof. The thieves smashed a glass skylight, cut with a hacksaw through a grille of 2in. steel, and entered the top floor. They then made their way down to an empty room over the shop. A hole was cut in the floor large enough for a hoy or a very small man to drop to the floor of the showrooms. Only thin steel bars outside the shop windows now hid the thief from pass-ers-by, and it is certain that he could not have made use of any light. Tn spite of this, everything of value in the window facing St. Martin’s Lane was removed. Watches, clocks, rings, cigarette cases and other articles, all of gold, were handed by the man to his companions in the room above, and the thieves thenmade their escape. Although the raid must, have lasted from two to three hours, no one saw the thieves enter or leave the building. Several residents in the. street heard them at work, hut as alterations are being made to the stage of the Coliseum the noise was thought to In' that of carpenters in the theatre, Mr iAfaria.iii, the proprietor of a restaurant near the shop, said:—“l heard a lot of hanging, as though hammers and chisels wore being used T thought at first that someone had broken into my premises, hut then 1 remembered that the Coliseum stage was being altered, so T dropped off to sleep. Tt seems to me that the acrobatic thief is the same, man who has broken into my restaurant three times within the last two years. On each occasion the premises were entered with amazing skill through a tiny skylight. On the last occasion, a few months age. the thief left an ugly-lnokiiig razor in . mv office, and 1 now keep a revolver! handy at night.” j The theory that the thieves w-re j disguised as workmen to escape notice i is being considered. i