JEWEL ROBBERIES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20061, 6 October 1939, Page 10

JEWEL ROBBERIES

AUCKLAND SHOPS TRIO FOR SENTENCE VICTIMS’ HEAVY LOSSES SUM OF £1032 INVOLVED (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. Seven recent burglaries in Auckland, including .. those ,ol two city jewellery shops, were referred to in charges preferred against three young men in the Police Court yesterday. The accused were Kenneth Hugh Bennetts, 1 a salesman, aged 21; Leo Leonard Colquhoun, a labourer, aged 25; and Allan Farquhar Young, a labourer, aged 19. They admitted all the charges. Tiie value of the jewellery and the money involved totalled £1032 4s 6d and the amount of jewellery recovered was stated to be £95 6s 3d. Bennetts was named in seven charges. In one he was jointly charged with Colquhoun with breaking and entering a shop and stealing £672 worth of jewellery and, in another, he was jointly charged with Young with breaking and entering another shop and stealing £l3O 15s worth ol jewellery. Robberies Admitted In a series of statements to detectives, Bennetts admitted robbing, in company with Young, the shop of Gordon Stuart Hutchinson, a jeweller in Queen’s Arcade, on September 11. He disposed of some of the jewellery next day by pawning it and selling it around city hotel bars. The rest he left in a drawer in a room he occupied in a city hotel. The next night, according to ' the statements; he went with Colquhoun and robbed the shop of Efndst McFeat, a jeweller in Karangahap.e road. In the morning he picked out the articles he though,t he could not dispose of, placed them in a suitcase and at night caught a ferry across the harbour. About halfway across. Bennetts alleged, he dumped the case into the harbour. Assumed Names “Next day I met'Young and Doyle and arranged to go that night to Wellington where we stayed to « private hotel under assumed names,” Bennetts added. "We took most of (lie goods from McFcat’s to Wellington and disposed ol them there." The jewellers, who were robbed, said their stocks were not insured. Mr. McFcat said the goods stolen from his shop did not include repair work in hand and the value of articles recovered was- £82.. .Mr. Hutchinson, said that £l3 6s 3d worth of goods taken'from his shop had been recovered. Detective-Sergeant Trethewey, who prosecuted, said that Bennetts volunteered admissions regarding five other burglaries. He took the witness to the Auckland Domain, where a mvrnber of articles were recovered from the long grass among the trees. The three accused were committed to the Supreme Court for sentence.