CAT BURGLAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 223, 19 September 1940, Page 18

CAT BURGLAR.

DAYLIGHT ESCAPE.

CRIMINAL MEETS DEATH.

(By Air.)

SYDNEY, Sept. 14.

Police are etill searching for Arthur Gene Lowering, 26, a eat burglar, serving three years, who made a daylight escape from Bathtiret Gaol last Saturday while working with other prisoners under guard in the vegetable garden. During a few moments while the guards were not looking Lovering scaled a eix-f oot wire fence and got away. He was wearing his prison uniform, and is believed to have torn one sleeve on the barbed wire strands at the top of the fence.

His escape was discovered at 10.50 a.m., and at 1 p.m. police received a report that he had been seen on the bridge over the Macquarie River at Eglington, about six miles from the gaol, but a search was fruitless. Lovering was serving three years for breaking, entering and stealing. He was sentenced on July 17, 1939. The police records shows that he was first convicted in Victoria at the age of 18. He is now 2C.

In Melbourne also last week another criminal met his death apparently in the course of trying to commit a crime. The man, Vernon Budge, was described as

one of Victoria's most notorious criminals although he was only 26. Climbing drainpipes was said to be his favourite way of breaking into city buildings. He was climbing into a Melbourne city building known as Holyman House and had almost reached the parapet when he slipped and crashed into a lane, receiving injuries from which he died in hospital on Saturday, two nights later. Dynamite, fuse, and other safe.-breaking materials were found in his pockets.

Budge had been released from Pentridge Gaol only two weeke before, afte.r having eerved three years for office breaking and safe blowing. He had eix aliases and many convictions on his record card, on which "Dead" has now been written. Early in his criminalcareer he figured in a revolver duel with police in Brunswick, Melbourne, early one morning, when lie was interrupted when breaking into a store. When the news of Budge's death went round the Melbourne underworld, many of his former associates sought adinieion to the city morgue to see his body, but were refused.