DRUG VENDETTA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 217, 13 August 1937, Page 7

DRUG VENDETTA.

FEUD IN PARIS UNDERWORLD. PARIS, Aug 12. The underworld drug vendetta reached a climax with the murder of Jean Paul Stefani, leader of a Corsican gang of traffickers, who was shot down in a street of Montmarte. The feud began when Stefani sold a drag factory to a rival gang and then informed the police. His rivals denounced Stefani who, on Christmas Eve, 1934, was arrested after a shooting affray in “The Dead Rat,” a Montmarte bar, when Angelo Foata, another Corsican, was wounded and his son, aged five, was killed. Stefani’s brother was shot dead a few hours later. Stefani was acquitted of the bar affray, Foata refusin'* to identify him as hi 6 son’s murderer.

When visiting his wife’s grave in a Paris cemetery, Stefani was ambushed by Foata, who was hidden behind a tombstone, one bullet piercing Stefani’s hat and another wounding a friend who was accompanying him. Grave diggers caught Foata and belaboured him with wooden crosses. Stefani observed the underworld code and declared that Foata did not attack him, but the grave-diggers’ evidence convicted Foata, who was sentenced to seven years with hard labour, since when Stefani had been a marked man.