WEST GERMANY: Mercedes on the Range

It was straight, stock-in-trade western fare. From all over the courtroom, angry cattlemen glowered at the captured rustler. And the rustler himself, a bull-necked hombre who liked heavy gambling and fancy women, was perfectly cast. All that marred the illusion was the scene of the trial—not Dodge City but Düsseldorf—and the repeated references to the rustler's favorite steed: a Mercedes 300 limousine.

On the face of the evidence, it was hard to see why Master Butcher Albert Roden, 50, chief defendant in last week's trial of "the King of German Cattle Thieves,"...

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