Kept Stolen Goods At Home

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30961, 18 January 1966, Page 3

Kept Stolen Goods At Home

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, Jan. 17. Described by the police as a “fence”, Robert Baxter Allen, aged 31, a boardinghouse owner, who said he had lived in fear of the day the police raided his house, appeared before Mr J. A. Wicks, S.M., today and pleaded guilty to 10 charges of receiving articles worth £578.

He pleaded not guilty to several other charges of receiving; after the evidence

had been heard on the first 10, the Magistrate remanded him till January 26. ,

The property involved had been stolen mainly from the Wellington railway yards, but some had been obtains, from burglaries and from thefts from vehicles. The articles included electric water-heaters, clothing, groceries, hardware, and toilet lines, paint, a roll of linoleum and a roll of carpet. Detective Sergeant A. H. Hart said that when the police searched Allen’s house on December 31, accused was out but returned soon after and readily admitted that a quantity of property in the house was stolen property. He said he had been receiv-

ing property for about five years and always carried a lot of money for purchasing goods, said Mr Hart. Most of the stolen articles were brought to Alien’s house in his own truck.

“The property was found throughout the house and some of it in quite obvious places,” said Mr Hart. He said the electric heaters, which had initially been stolen from uncompleted wards at ’.Vellington Hospital between April and September. 1964, were found in the roof of the house which had been wired with a string of lights for operating in the dark. Three and a half truck loads of property were taken from the house and other

houses owned by Allen, but some of it would be return id as it had not been stolen.

“Although he was very straight-forward, he would not disclose the names or assist with the identifying of the persons from whom he received the property,” said Mr Hart.

“He said he was in it alone and would take whait was coming to him.”

Mr W. V. Gazley, for Alien, asked for bail over the period of the remand as his client had “business affairs to fix.” The Magistrate: I realise he may have business matters to attend to and in anticipation of what is likely to happen, I will allow it.