“SORRY, MY MISTAKE!”

Taihape Daily Times, 30 August 1919, Page 7

“SORRY, MY MISTAKE!”

CRIMINALS WHO BLUNDERED BAWLY. That cheerful person, Lenin, is repiOl'tCd to ha.ve said that he would rather .a score of innocent persons were killed than ‘that one of the middleclass should Escape. _ His state of mind must resemble that of another Russian, the woman calling herself Mrs Stafford, who shot M. Muller, the wealthy Parisian banker, in -the Hotel Jungfrau, at Interlaken. ' She fired at her victim as he was reading a newspaper over his luncheon, and killed him on the spot_ Confronted xvith the body, she said she was sorry. She had made a mistake. She had taken for M, Durnovo, a Russian Minister, who was not too friendly towards Anarchists. “But,” she added, “In such a time as the present one life more or less does not matter.” MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

A similar case occurred more recently in New York. Mr J. W. Burke, of ‘tho Ironworkers’ Union, incurred the enmity of :a. certain p:oTitical gang of the baser sm't‘, because he had accused them of “graft.” The gang hired three criminals, knmvn as “Big Shim,”_ “The. Dynamite King,” and “Ernest the Crow,” to murder ‘him.

The three went to a saloon, saw -there a man whom they evidently -thought was Burks, and shot him. Burke was not in New York at all ‘that evening, and the unfortunate victim was Mr Thomas Conroy, iof the Plumbers’ Union.

One more victim of blunder on the part of a hired murderer" was Mr Abe, director of the political buerau of the Japanese Foreign Oflice, who was tabbed to death on :1. wintcr’s night in 1913. His features closely resembled -those of the famous Chinese reformer, Sun Yat Sen, and, -as was -afterwards discovered, his murderer mistook him for that person. If murderers make mistakes, thieves do so much more frequently, and sometimes the results are distinctly humorous. A burglar broke into a house at Boston, taking no end ‘of trouble to get in without making a sound. He reached the dining room without disturbing anyone, collected all the silver’, packed it. carefully in a bag, and carried this out into the hall. A gleam from his electric torch fell =ll-ltlerily or. a’ tall figure standing opposite, and the -thief, in sudden pan-is pulled -out l1i.~". revolver and blazed Etwavh ‘Two athletic sons of the house cnme racing downstairs, to find that the burglar had emptied his pistol into at life-sized bronze figure which stood in the hall. The blunderer had five years in which to repent his foolish mistake. During the last couple ‘of years tobacco las become so scarce and clear as to be well Worth even a burglar’s at-t-_‘.n:'lon_ But. he must surely have been :1 new hand in the profession who broke into :1 tobaeconists and raidel all he could carry from the front window. UN—REWARDED ENERGY. He might lrzzve known that in these

days the “show” consists entirely of dummy packages. When he discovered his mistake it was too late for useful 1-cpentence, so he dumped the whole lot in an alley, where it was found next morning. Another disappointed criminal was the one who stole a case of shoes from a boot shop in Pittsburg, only to find when he had conveyed ?them_ home, that ‘they were all for the left foot. They Were, in fact, a case of samples. The way in which burglars overlook booty is very odEl. It. was in the Strand, in «London, that ‘two men broke into a publishing ofiice, and spent half a night. cutting open a. large safe, in which was nothing but an empty cashbox. They were apparently too Weary to start on a. smaller safe in the same--I'o-om, which held: a quantity of money; but. the oddest part of the whole business is that in a confectioner’s shop below, through whichltheyihacl gained an entrance to the npsfiiir offices, was a safe of which they had taken no notice.