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! I I j , j [ , j 5 D ANOTHER SMUGGLING CASE NEW YORK, N. Y., May 6. — A 6,000 customs seizure of gowns, furs and jewels at the apartment of Mrs. James C. Ayer, a leader of the fashionable Long Island North Shore colony, marked renewal yesterday of the governments drive against society smug-i glers. Treasury department officials reported that the case is bigger than any recent smuggling case, including those in which Jack Benny and George Burns, radio and screen stars, and Mrs. Edgar J. Lauer, wife of a state supreme court justice, were involved. Cus- toms agents seized at the town apartment of Mrs. Ayer, whose husband, Dr. James C. Ayer, died last March, a long list of miscel-I laneous items ranging from diamond and platinum bracelets to ermine and mink capes, all claimed to have been smuggled in from Paris. Mrs. Ayer, who was May Candee Hancock, member of an old Syracuse, N. Y., family, maintains residence at Nassau, Bermuda, as well as in New York and Long Island. She is a member of the Society of Colonial Dames and was at one time a leader of the American colony in Paris.
