JEWELS HIDDEN IN WOOL.

Shannon News, 16 September 1924, Page 4

JEWELS HIDDEN IN WOOL.

The Moscow police, by their discovery of a" quantity of precious stones worth £IO,OOO which were stolen from the Government Jewel Department three years ago, have cleared up one of the most baffling mysteries which has confronted them since the revolution. Fifteen persons, men and women, were condemned to death and executed in.the autumn of 1921 after the disappearance .of the jewels, which included many articles of gold, a number of pearl necklaces,, emeralds, and diamonds.

Inquiries were conducted by the police for some time without avail, until one day a woman of the nobility called at police headquarters and reported that she had been a girl in the street wearing her diamond brooch, which had been "requisitioned 14 the previous year.

Further investigations following this report led to the arrest and trial of all persons in the department responsible for the safekeeping of the jewellery. They were sentenced to death amid remarkable scenes in the court-

yard, several hysterical women relatives of the condemned attempting to attack the judges. The court was finally cleared by soldiers with fixed bayonets.

The most prominent among the prisoners conviclod was M. Dupachef, a director of the jewel department, who went to hi s death protesting his innocence, to the last

Nothing more was heard of the case until recently, when the police were notified of the sale of a few small diamonds in a Moscow market by the aged widow of the condemned- Lupaehef.

They promptly called at her apartment, finding her seated in a rocking chair, white-haired and trembling, nervously knitting from a loose ball of white wool in her lap.

They searched every corner of her apartment without success until suddenly the old woman fell fainting to the floor as one of the members of the searching party cried out to the others. He had seized the ball of wool in her lap and—had found the lost diamonds.