FLYING FROM JUSTICE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 76, 26 March 1912, Page 8

FLYING FROM JUSTICE.

A’feai worthy of Jack Sheppard was' ‘' accomplished in Paris; a few’ weteks ago by a Dutchman named Marios' Devos,' who had been in gaol for’three weeks' awaiting extradition to Holland. The Paris correspondent of the “Daily Express' ’ states that Devos was walking in the exercise yard with other prisoners when he suddenly made a running jump at the wall, which is fourteen foet high and topped with iron spikes. He mounted' it' “like a cht,” and to the'amazement of the gable'rkj ’iimped' down into a little court-yard on the other sidel His guardians smiled, thinking that escape from this yard was impossible, but a window opening on a staircase of the Law Coilrts was thrown, open, a wire ladder was let down into the yard, twenty feet below, and Devos ran. up it. By the time the alarm had been given Devos and two friends who had assisted him had vanished. Next morning the police managed to arrest Maurice Devos, a brother of Marius, and, though they could extract no information from him- concerning his brother's whereabouts, he told them a romantic story. Marius Devos had been arrested in Paris as an escapee from the gaol at Schiwelingen, in Holland, and Maurice described the method of his escape on that occasion. The prisoner hid himself in a cartload of building material in the prison yard at Schwelingen, and when the owners of the cart drove away they unconsciously took him with them. Ho waited until they had travelled some distance from the gaol and then dropped silently to the ground unseen by his companions. Making his way across country,, ho found his two brothers waiting for Him in a secluded field. Maurice is an aviator, and he had his aeroplane with him. The three men boarded it and flew out of Holland into Belgium. Some distance from the frontier they took the aeroplane to pieces and sent it by rail to Paris, following themselves in a motor car. Marius Devos might have hidden safely in the French capital, but his recklessness led to his arrest. Whether the aeroplane assisted his second flight from justice has not boon ascertained.