ESCAPER'S ‘DATE’ MAY GET £5,000

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 13

ESCAPER'S ‘DATE’ MAY GET £5,000

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) SYDNEY, January 7. A 20-year-old girl is likely to collect the £5OOO reward for the Pentridge gaol escapers, Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker.

Information the girl gave led to their arrest outside Concord Repatriation Hospital on Wednesday night. The girl’s mother had boarded Walker under another name some time ago. The girl realised the former boarder was Walker after her mother sent her clippings of the escape stories from New Zealand. Walker telephoned the girl at her work on Tuesday and arranged to meet her on Wednesday night near Concord Repatriation Hospital. He

asked her to bring a friend. After Walker telephoned her, the girl telephoned the police who asked her to keep the appointment. She agreed to allow a policewoman, Sergeant D. Fricker, to accompany her on the "date.” To protect the girl police have not released her name. The Victorian acting-Chief Secretary (Mr Manson) said yesterday the Chief Commis sioner of Police (Mr Arnold) was investigating the recapture. The Government’s decision on the £5OOO reward would follow Mr Arnold’s report. [Above: The car in which

the escapers drove to the hospital. Bottom left: Ryan Right: Walker with detectives. | The escapers were again under heavy guard when they appeared in the Central Court this morning. Both men were handcuffed and six police officers stood within a few feet of them.

Each was charged with escaping from Pentridge Gaol on December 19. Detective-Inspector F. S. Holland said both men had been interviewed earlier today about several offences in Victoria. “Walker b -, made written confessions in relation to some of those matters,” he said. He said Ryan was interviewed and had subsequently signed a record of the interview.

An extradition order was made by the Court. Later the men were returned to Melbourne in a char'tred Fokker aircraft. Also in the Central Court today were a man and a woman charged with having harboured the escapers. They are Bernard Davitt, aged 28, a painter and decorator, and Margaret Elaine Callesen, aged 27, unemployed, who were further remanded to January 14.