BIOGRAPH CRIMINALS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 194, 6 January 1913, Page 6

BIOGRAPH CRIMINALS.

POLICE HELP THIEVES. COMEDY COVERS CLEVER BURGLARY SCHEME. London, December 26. The biograph craze has been responsible for many things, and the clever burglary now has to be added to the list. A Parisian suburb was the scene of tlie comedy. A party of men accosted a constable outside the villa of a well-known banker, and produced a letter authorising them to take a moving picture, and asking the guardians of the law to prevent the public disturbing the actors. The officer acquiesced, and the photographers, with their cameras, took up their positions. Two imen, dressed up as iburglars, placed a ladder to one of the windows, clambered up, broke the glass, and got in. Other men, clad as policemen, got ready to apprehend their friends as soon as they came out, and when the two burglars appeared with sacks crammed with spoil a realistic struggle took place in •the garden between picture thieves and picture police. Real officers who had come up to witness the scene stood by and vigorously applauded, giving the supposed mock policemen hints as to the best way of get- ■ ting ju-jitsu grips on the miscreants. This sort of thing went on for a, while, and then the biograph men packed up their traps, bade the genuine po- ■ lice farewell, and went away. The following morning the banker complained to the authorities that £fooo worth of valuables had been stolen from his villa. An almost similar "occurrence to that reported'in the above cable happened in New York a couple of years ago. On that occasion the police held back the crowds of people who- were interested ■in the alletpd biograph actors and photographers, and the thieves got clear away.