Jackpot

One bright morning last week two pick & shovel laborers turned up at the house of Ralph M. Wilby in Burnaby, B.C. While a Canadian Mountie stood guard, they dug up the whole backyard, then the sides, then the front yard. Then they started digging up the neighbors' yard.

After three days & nights, shovels clunked against three large cans, buried 3 ft. deep. Inside were Canadian and U.S. Government bonds worth some $129,000, another $95,000 in U.S. cash.

Ralph Wilby (alias Alexander Douglas Hume) directed the exhumation--from New York City's Tombs Prison. He had purloined $386,920 from the New York realty management firm for which he worked, then absconded. He was captured last spring at Victoria, extradited, convicted. At first he would not tell where his unspent loot was cached. But last week, facing a 20-year sentence, fortyish Ralph Wilby talked.

His hope: clemency. His chances: not as bright as the Vancouver Daily Province predicted when it claimed that in return for tattling on himself, Wilby would get a mere two-year sentence, two free tickets to Africa for his wife and himself, $10,500 cash for rehabilitation purposes.

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