JASPER CRAGO AGAIN.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1810, 24 July 1913, Page 7

JASPER CRAGO AGAIN.

ASTONISHING CRIMINAL. HIS BLOWPIPE & CELL WINDOW. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) Auckland, July 23. On Friday evening the Mt. Eden Gaol was the scene of another ; attompted escape by a prisoner, but tho effort proved abortive. The bid was made by the youth Robin Jasper Crago, who achieved notoriety last year by an attempt to blackmail Mr. J. J. Craig, and also as a central figure in the Takapuna. motor-car shooting case, which earned him a sentence of ten years' reformative treatment. Crago has, since then, been lodged in Mt. Eden Gaol. About an hour after "lights out," the warder on duty in the corridor of the prison . wing, where ,Crago>'s cell is situated, heard a "suspicious sound, which in a few minutes ho located as proceeding from Crago's cell. Peeping through the "spy-hole" of the oell he saw Crago busy at the oiitside window of the cell. He called another warder, and, when ho looked again through tho "spy-hole," he saw that Crago had crossed to the interior wall of the cell. Here in a corner, near the door of the cell, is a recess containing a gas-jet, the recess being fitted with' glass on the side opening into tho cell to prevent the prisoner from interfering with live light. Crago had broken the glass protecting tho gas-jet, and .had his hand inside tho recess doing something to the gas. Then tho warder, from tho outside of the . recess, grabbed Crago's hand where it wasint the jet, and held him till another warder, who had been summoned, came.

Inquiry revealed that tho youth had made most elaborate arrangements for escape. Attached to the gas-jet was the end of a length of tubing which reached across the cell to the-outside window. At the other end of tho tubing was a lead cap, in the form of a tube, flattened at the end as to concentrate the flamo of the gas when'it. was lit there. The object of the gas-tubing with tho blowpipe cap was to silently break tho glass of the cell window, and the prisoner intended to play his extempore blowpipe -on the iron bars of the window, with a view to bending and levering them aside when he had sufficiently heated them. While ineffective 1 for the purpose intended, tlie tubing was surprisingly ingenious work. It was paper-tubing, made of sanitary paper and leaves from a Bible which was put in the cell. The sanitary pa])or was rolled lengthwise, making a cylinder, and this had been reinforced and kept in roll by leaves of the Bible being gummed round it at intervals. Crago had obtained tho "gum" for his purpose. •by saving portions of his porridge. . Crago was sentenced to four days' confinement on bread and water diet. ,