THREATENING LETTERS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 147, 17 March 1939, Page 3

THREATENING LETTERS

Prisoner Remanded For Examination NO APPARENT MOTIVE So that, a neurologist may examine him, Douglas Maxwell, aged 27, shop assistant and labourer, was stood down till next YVednesday when he appeared before Mr. Justice Blair in the Supreme Court in YVellington yesterday for sentence on four charges of demanding money with menaces and two charges of threatening to burn down a building. The man who had been threatened, William Richard Kenner, had received letters from Maxwell.

Counsel for Maxwell, Mr. YV. L. Rothenberg, said prisoner was completely without motive for demanding money, and it could Be explained only 7 by a temporary mental aberration. He had been brought up by an aunt without children of her own and had been the object of all her care. He had never been in need of money or assistance. He bad hatched a childish scheme to extort £2OO from a man whom he did not know and who did not know him; a scheme which showed an absence of criminal cunning. When asked what he Intended to do with the money he had said he had not the slightest idea. Previously his record had been unblemished, and in some ways creditable, and had he not been frank with the police it was doubtful whether be could have been convicted. Prisoner appeared first in the morning and was stood down till the afternoon, his Honour saying he wished to consider the case further. Upon prisoner’s second appearance his counsel said arrangements had been made for bis examination, and the adjournment till Wednesday was granted.