Daily News

PARIS -- A lone man carrying a gun stole between €6 million ($8.5 million) and €6.5 million worth of jewels Saturday afternoon from the Chopard jewelry store in Place Vendome, police and a police union official said.

The value of the heist was estimated at £10 million

No one was reported injured in the robbery.

Police said the operation was carried out by one man. Olivier Lebon, an investigations officer with the Alliance police union, said a man in his 50s wearing a suit walked into the boutique in the afternoon, threatened employees with a gun and, minutes later, walked calmly out of the store with his loot.

It wasn't immediately known whether he had an accomplice outside the store or waiting elsewhere.

Numerous jewelers, as well as France's Justice Ministry, are located on the elegant Place Vendome.

The estimated value of the stolen jewels is far below the €80 million in watches and jewels stolen from the Harry Winston shop in Paris in December 2008.

Humphrey Bogart, pictured here as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, was known for his signature fedora hat

PETALING JAYA: Time is up for loan sharks high on the wanted list and police will now turn the tables on them by circulating their photos to the public through the media.

The 24-hour deadline given to these savage moneylenders has lapsed.

“Since they did not show up, the police will go after them,” Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said.

Their photographs will be made available to the press today.

According to Selangor CID chief Datuk Hasnan Hassan, as at noon yesterday, none of the Ah Long had surrendered.

Police have also arrested two more men believed to be involved in the abduction and confinement of three victims at a Seri Kembangan shoplot last week.

Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation vice-chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye called for the photographs of the brutal Ah Long and their runners to be displayed in public places.

“This is because the public is often not aware of the underhanded tactics some of the Ah Long are capable of,” he said.

“When people know who they really are, they will not dare borrow money from them. This can help reduce the number of intimidation cases involving Ah Long,” he said.

He also urged the courts to impose heavy penalties on merciless loan sharks to serve as a deterrent to others.

Citing the case of the three loan defaulters who were chained and tortured, Lee said this was an example of how the loan sharks were capable of inhuman acts.

He also called on the Government to study the circumstances that drove people to borrow from loan sharks.

“There are so many cases out there where people are desperate for even small amounts of money. They do not know where to turn to for help as financial institutions would not entertain them.

“The Ah Long business is flourishing because transactions can be made almost immediately,” he added.

Lee said it was high time the Finance Ministry carried out a study to find ways to help people who need micro loans to settle medical bills or to pay for their children’s education.

PETALING JAYA: Her relatives noticed the scars on the boy’s head three years ago and her colleagues at a music school saw bruises on his face all the time. When they confronted the single mother, she just brushed it off saying her five-year-old son was naughty and was always falling down.

However, the truth came out on Tuesday when Welfare Department officers rescued the boy and took him to the Serdang Hospital.

He had so many injuries that doctors who examined him were taken aback as there was barely a spot on the body that had no scars.



A relative finally alerted the department after being encouraged to do so by a Starprobe team that had been following the case for the past few days.

On Tuesday, at about 11.30am, reporters from The Star stationed outside the family home in Puchong alerted the welfare officers that the mother and child were at home. A department team came about an hour later.

The Starprobe team was able to witness the rescue first hand as the officers used the soft approach to convince the mother to allow them to take the child.



After two hours, the tearful mother finally relented but she kept on shouting at her son who was also crying.

It took the officers some time to persuade the boy to get into their car to get to the hospital.

Medical staff confirmed bruises, cane marks, cuts and swellings on the boy which they said were not self-inflicted.

The boy later told the welfare and medical officers that his mother had beaten him and that it had been going on for a long time.

It was learnt that the mother had a “complicated life” and was now divorced from the boy’s father who had never helped raise the child.

“I grew up in a poor family. My father was a no-good scoundrel who always cheated on her and my mother threw him out of the house when I was four – and she was quite right to do so.



“After that, it was only the two of us.

“My mama was a strong woman. She taught me discipline, order and diligence. She enabled me good education and job training and she constantly worked hard and would take difficult jobs only to support the both of us.

“She was as strict as it was necessary. She was the best woman in the world. And I was her husband, in some way. She was the boss at home, but I was the only man in the house."






When asked whether he was sexually abused by his mother, he said: “No, never. My mother was decent, most decent. I loved her over everything.

“I have admired her. I admired her very much. But I have naturally not done anything. There was nothing there."

When asked whether there were any fantasies about her mother, he said: “Yes, probably, but I was strong, almost as strong as my mother, and I have therefore managed to suppress my urges.

“Later, I got older and I started going out and I had several amorous affairs. And than I found Rosemarie.



“She had nothing in common with my mother. But, however, there were some similarities.

“She was also wonderful, but wonderful in a different ways. She was much more shy and weaker than my mother.

“I always wanted to have many children. Not children that would have to, like I had, grow up alone, but children that would always have someone to play with. I had a dream about a large family ever since I was a little boy.

“And Rosemarie appeared to be a suitable mother. That motive [for marrying her] was not a bad one. And it is true: I always loved her and I will always love her."

When asked what happened when he raped a woman in 1967, he said: “I don’t know what came into me.

“But this is also true: I always wanted to be a good husband and father.

“I admit I have always valued decency and good behaviour. I grew up in the Nazi era and strictness and discipline were very important then. I have probably subconsciously picked up some of that, which is only normal.

“But I am not the beast the media make me to be."

When asked what he would think of a man like himself, he said: “Seen form the outside – I would probably think he was a beast or a monster."

He rejected the claims, made by his daughter Elisabeth, that he started abusing her when she was 11, and said: “That is not true. I am not a man who would molest children.

"It only started later, much later, when she was already underneath."

He also admitted to having planned the crime for a long period of time: “It was approximately two, three years before. It must have been 1981 or 1982 when I started to turn a room in my cellar into a cell. I brought in a heavy door of steel and concrete and equipped it with a remote-controlled electrical motor, which would open it only after a numeric code was entered.

“I isolated the whole bunker to become sound-proof. I installed a wash basin, a toilet, a bed, a cooker and a refrigerator. Electricity and light were already installed.

“Perhaps someone noticed the construction works. But it would have not made any difference, whether they did or not. The cellar of my house belonged to me and to me alone, it was my kingdom to which only I had access to. Everyone who lived there knew that. My wife, my children, my lodgers. And no-one would have dared to enter my realm or even to ask me what I was doing there.

“I told everyone that my office was there, full of private files that were my business alone and that was enough – everyone adhered to my rules.

Speaking about Elisabeth, he said: “Ever since she entered puberty she did not adhere to any rules any more, she would spend whole nights in dingy bars, drinking alcohol and smoking. I only tried to pull her out of that misery. I got her a job as a waitress but she would not go to work for days. She even escaped twice and hung out with bad people during this time and they were not a good company for her. I would bring her back home each time, but she would try to escape again.

“That is why I had to do something; I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world.”

He denied handcuffing her or keeping her on a dog leash, as she told police, and said: “That would not have been necessary. My daughter had no chance of escape. It was a vicious circle, a circle from which there was no exit – not only for Elisabeth, but also for myself.

“With every passing week in which I kept my daughter captive my situation was getting crazier. I really was thinking about whether I should let her go or not. But I was not able to make that decision, although - or maybe exactly because of that - I knew that with every passing day what I had done would be more severely judged.

“But I was afraid of being arrested and of having my family and everyone out there find out about my crime – and so I postponed my decision again and again. Until one day it was really too late to free Elisabeth and take her upstairs.”

He said he then begun to compare his daughter to his mother: “But the urge have sex with Elisabeth was growing stronger and stronger.

“I knew that Elisabeth did not want the things I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her.

“But the urge to finally be able to taste the forbidden fruit was too strong. It was like an addiction.

“In reality, I wanted to have children with her.

“Elisabeth naturally had fear of giving birth but I brought her medical books to the cellar, so she could prepare for the Day X. I brought her towels, disinfectants and nappies.

“I was looking forward to the offspring. It was a beautiful idea for me, to have a proper family, also down in the cellar, with a good wife and a couple of children.

“I made preparations for all possibilities. Every time I left the bunker, I would activate a time lock, which would make sure that the doors to the dungeon would open if I would not return after a certain period of time.

“Had I died, Elisabeth and the children would have been freed."

”After [the youngest boy] was born at the end of 2002 I even gave Elizabeth a washing machine so that she could wash the clothes and bed sheets of the children and not have to hand wash them in the basin.

”I always knew during the whole 24 years that what I was doing was not right that I must have been crazy to do such a thing, but still it became a normal occurrence to lead a second life in the cellar of my house.”

When asked about whether he saw his captives as a second family he said: “It was exactly that was the case.”

He also said that Elizabeth never told the children that they were a product of incestuous relationship. The children in the dungeon always had to call him grandpa.

He said: ”Elizabeth has always taken care of things for the sake of the family.

”I have tried to provide for my family in the cellar as best as possible. Whenever I went to the bunker I would bring my daughter flowers and cuddly toys as well as books for the children. I would watch an adventure film on video with them while Elizabeth would prepare our favourite food and then we would all sit together at the kitchen table and eat together.”

He also said that the children were often suffering from infections, coughing attacks, chest pain and epileptic attacks.

He claimed he planned to integrate his dungeon family into his upstairs family.

He said: “I wanted to take Elizabeth, [and the children] to my home. I have grown old in the meantime, I was not so agile anymore and I simply knew that in the near future I would not have been able to provide for my second family in the bunker.

"Elizabeth and the children were supposed to tell the story that they had been at a secret location with a cult until they were set free.”

He also said that he hoped to be able to get away with his crime.

”Of course this is what I hoped for even if that hope was weak. There was always the danger that Elizabeth and the children could have betrayed me but I accepted that risk and I have done that as the tragedy [with the oldest daughter] escalated.”

Speaking of the oldest girl's illness he said: “She tore the clothes from her body and threw them in the toilet.”

When asked how did he manage to prevent his daughter and her children from escaping he said: “It was not difficult. I did not need to use physical violence. Elizabeth and the children fully accepted me as the supreme head of the family, they would have never dared to attack me.

"Apart from that they also knew that I was the only one who had the numeric code for the remote control that could open and close the doors to the dungeon.”

When asked about whether he threatened them with gas poisoning if they attempted to escape he said: “I have only explained to them that they should not fiddle with the dungeon door or else they could receive an electrical shock and die.”

When asked whether he now was looking forward to death he said: “No, I only want redemption.”

SEREMBAN: An insurance agent was shot 10 times at close range in front of his house in Taman Desa Beringin, Sikamat while he was about to drive to the market yesterday.

The Proton Gen 2 car belonging to B. Sivaneswaran (below) that crashed into a Proton Wira as he was trying to get away after he was shot.

In the 5pm incident, B. Sivaneswaran, 40, died on the spot after being hit by 10 of the 14 shots fired by one of two men in a silver Honda Civic, with fake registration number plates.

State police chief Datuk Osman Salleh said prior to the incident, the two suspects were seen outside the victim's house, waiting for him to come out.

"When the suspects saw the victim coming out of his house and getting into his Proton Gen 2, they drove towards him and fired several shots.

"The victim tried to escape by reversing his car.
"Unfortunately, the victim crashed into another car parked behind and the suspects took the opportunity to get out of their car and walk towards the victim and shot at him," he said when met at the scene.

Osman said initial investigations revealed that 14 shots were fired from a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, of which 10 shots hit the victim, especially on his right side.

"Efforts to track down the suspects are already ongoing, including getting a description from witnesses since the suspects were not wearing masks. We are not ruling out the possibility that the suspects were hired killers," he added.

SERDANG: A lecturer at a public university here stands accused of raping one of his charges.
The lecturer, from the engineering faculty, is said to have threatened to expel the 26-year-old student from Bandar Tasik Selatan if she told anyone about the rape. He also allegedly offered to make her his third wife.

The student lodged a report last week alleging rape and molest.

Her ordeal began at the end of last year when she was told to meet the lecturer in his office. She was supposed to hand in her assignment.

"She went to the lecturer's office and handed her assignment. She was told to wait while he browsed through the work," said a source.
"The student then told him this would be their last meeting as she had completed all her assignments. She thanked him for his help and guidance."

The lecturer then locked the door and hugged and kissed the student who tried to push him off.

He allegedly took out a sleeping bag from a cupboard, grabbed the student and pushed her onto to the floor. The victim screamed for help but was gagged.

After allegedly raping her, the lecturer warned the student not to inform anyone about the incident or he would not only smear her name but also get her expelled.

"The victim claimed that the lecturer offered to make her his third wife. But she refused despite his persistence. She was molested and raped on two other occasions," the source disclosed.

Selangor CID chief Senior Assistant Commissioner II Hasnan Hassan said police would question the lecturer when he returned from his holiday abroad.

KUALA Lumpur: A nurse who was raped by a former boyfriend of three years ago finally lodged a police report because he kept threatening to distribute nude photos of her.

It is learned that the nurse, who is now married to someone else, was introduced to a man from her stepmother in 2006.

She went with the man who claimed he was a spiritual person and he asked her to join him in his business of selling compact discs to religious teachings.

When she rejected the offer, he became angry and in an act of revenge, raped her.

He had threatened her with phone calls since then that he would distribute nude pictures of her while they were taken together.

It is learned that the threats continued even after the woman got married a year ago, and became worse after the suspect threatened to show pictures of her husband and family members.

The victim lodged the report at the Pantai police station here on Friday.

Brickfields OCPD Asst Comma wan wan Abdul Bari Abdul Khalid confirmed receiving a report on the incident, adding that the case is being investigated under Section 506 of the Penal Code for criminal intimidation.