Murder Charges For Escapers

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30954, 10 January 1966, Page 6

Murder Charges For Escapers

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

MELBOURNE, January 9,

Ronald Ryan, aged 40, and Peter Walker, aged 24, have been charged at a specially convened session of Melbourne’s City Court with murder and with escaping from Pentridge.

Mr W. N. Thompson. S.M., remanded them to a date to be fixed on charges of murdering warder George Hodson, and escaping from the jail on December 19.

Walker was also remanded on a charge of murdering truck driver Arthur Henderson at Middle Park on or about December 24. Neither man was asked to plead. On Friday afternoon Ryan and Walker landed with elaborate security precautions in a chartered Fokker aircraft at Laverton air force base, about twenty-five miles from Melbourne, after flying from Sydney.

They were escorted from the plane by the chief of the Homicide Squad, DetectiveInspector Frank Holland, and three other detectives who went to Sydney—where Ryan and Walker were arrested on Wednesday night—for the extradition applications. With Norman Harold Murray, of Sydney, they were

taken into the police headquarters through a rear door. Murray was later charged at the city watchhouse with harbouring Ryan and Walker at Kensington, Victoria, on December 19 “and days thereafter.”

Ryan and Walker are today in the heavily guarded maximum security division of Pentridge. For 15 hours a day they will be locked in separate single cells and will not be permitted to speak or to see one another or any other prisoners.