Burglar Who Left His Teeth Marks In Cheese

Chronicle (Levin), 8 November 1949, Page 6

Burglar Who Left His Teeth Marks In Cheese

AUCKLAND, Nov. 7. Believed to be the first evidence of its kind in New Zealand, a plaster cast of teeth bites made in a block of cheese and an apple partly eaten by a burglar in a Devonport home were shown in the Police Court today. §iriiilar casts taken from the man accused were also produced. John Burns, aged 24, a coachbuilder and assisted immigrant, pleaded guilty to three charges of breaking and entering houses. He committed the theft while in one house. Justices of the Peace committed Tiim to the Supre'me' Court for sentence. A dentist,, Valentine John An-derson-Byown, returned to his home to 'find the place had been . burgled. On the floor were cheese and an apple. At the request of the police he made plaster casts and calculated that the man who made the bites was in his early twenties and had a pointed chin. The second tooth from the right on the upper jaw was tilted inwards. He later made casts from another cake of cheese and an apple handed him by the police. He concluded that the bites were made by the same person. Burns when arrested denied the charges, but after his slioe had been found to mateh an impression on a bed sheet in the burgled house he admitted ihe crime. Burns also denied burgling the dentist's home, but confessed when confronted with the evidence of the teeth bites.