PIGEON USED IN CRIME.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 315, 21 November 1929, Page 6

PIGEON USED IN CRIME.

BIRD PURSUED BY ’PLANE. Despite the imagination of film authors, fact still outstrips fiction, and the use of an aeroplane against a bird engaged on a criminal enterprise is an accomplished fact, writes the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. A few weeks ago a small packet was left at the house of Herr Pattberg, the manager of one of the colleries in the Duisberg district. On being opened it revealed a cage containing two carrier piegons. The usual emblematic significance of these birds was, however, roughly slighted by the letter which accompanied them.

In this missive Herr Pattberg was informed that his days were numbered unless, within a specified term, he liberated the pigeons with banknotes to the value of £250 attached to their bodies. This was a novel and ingenious plan to avoid the risk which the commonplace blackmailer runs when he or his emissaries comes to receive the ransom.

But the Duisberg police, who were promptly informed of it, went one better. They called in the wellknown aviator, Herr Karl Bonenkamp, and asked him if he could track a homing pigeon to its cote. He thought he could, and suggested preliminary trials. These were carried out and proved quite successful.

Accordingly, on the first available opportunity the aviator took his machine up and hovered over Duisberg till a pigeon was seen to rise from an agreed spot. The bird took a straight course to the north-west, and was followed by the aviator with all the slowness he could command.

He never lost touch with his quarry, which crossed the Rhine and descended on a house near Homberg, to I to the west of Ruhrort. The observer who accompanied Bonenkamp was able to take a photograph in which the house was clearly indentifiable. Armed with this photograph, thepolice proceeded to the spot, and there, sure enough, found the pigeon cote belonging to an unemployed miner. The man was so overwhelmed by the method by which his crime had been traced to him that he at v once confessed that he sent his pigeon on the blackmailing errand.