MAN’S 1300 FIANCEES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5238, 13 February 1928, Page 3

MAN’S 1300 FIANCEES.

LUXURY OF GETTING ENGAGED

NARROW ESCAPE OF 331 WIDOWS

Franz Liefke, a handsome man' of 40 with black moustache and soulful eyes, has been arrested at the office of a’ newspaper in Britain just as he was collecting the 331 answers to the fallowing advertisement “ Civil Servant, widower, desires to meet a widow, about 30, with a view to matrimony. No objection to child. Some property desirable but not essential.”

And a very good thing it was for the, 331 widows that the police pounced on Franz, for whom they ■have been looking since the summer of 1925. They state that he was been making a comfortable living for the past fifteen years, with the exception of the year which he passed in prison, by swindling girls and widows who were anxious to marry.

Between 1912 and' 1924 he had swindled some 900 of them and carried on his profitable life work of getting engaged in every part of Germany. He was at last caught and sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour, but after a. year he escaped and resumed his old life.. Franz’s method was very simple.’ He inserted a modest advertisomenc in the chief newspapers of the 'place he was living in and started a corresspondence with four or five of the women who replied. He arranged to meet one of them, and he was such a pastmaster in the art of inspiring confidence and. of' awakening affection thaj he usually succeeded in extracting money cr jewellery from his victim.

When 'he had fleeced Her he sent a little note to say that he was going away for a. fortnight, and turned his attention to another promising widow. It is stated that his victims in thelast year were as many as 400.