TRIPLE CRIMES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 109, 25 May 1937, Page 10

TRIPLE CRIMES

-Pregg Association.)

Saloon Car and Truck Stolen HOTEL BAR BURGLED

(JBr Telegraph-

AUCKLAND, Dast Night. The cool theft of an expensive English saloon car from Cheltenham on Sunday night, a burglary at the Patumahoe Hotel bar early this morning, and the conversion of a 24-ton truck from West street, Pukekohe, sqme ,time during Sunday night are all linked in an investigation which the police are making in difEerent parts of the Auckland province. The thieves stole £5 from a purse left in the car and £7 from the till in the hotel bar. To deaden the sound of moving coins mineral water was poured into the till xeceptacle. The car and truck were found abandoned down a bank on the Pukekqhe-Patu-mahoe road. Just after 6.30 p.m. on Sunday Mrs. Harper, of Tainui road, Cheltenham, drove her oar into a garage at tho side of the house and early this morning it waa not there. The ho'use is about 100 yards from the roadway and to Temove the car and start it without risk of detection it would be necessary to open the garage doors and push the car down a long driveway. Mrs. Harper learned this afternoon that her car was found badly damaged at the roadside about 35 miles south of Auckland. Apparently the thieves drove to the Patumahoe Hotel early this morning, climbed through the office window and iound the keys of the bar door. The nest move appears to have been toward Pukekohe and the suggestion is that the driver of the car was either travelling too fast and was unf amiliar with the controls, which are diffe^ent on this particular make of car from most others; or that the car skiffded, for it went over a six foot bank, through a fence and into a paddock. The next move seems to have been made in Pukekohe where a truck belonging to Harold Carter, a carrier, of Bombay, was stolen. It is evident the truck was driven to the spot where the car went over the bank and used in an endeavour to hani the car back on to the road, for when the police arrived later in the morning they found the two vehicles roped together. Nearby residents heard the sound of a truck engine being accelerated. .They raised their windows to look out on to the road, and in so doing presumably frightened the thieves since the noise of the truck motor died away and was not heard again. , When the police found the two vehicle3 the car mudguards we7*e badly crumpledj the, running boai*ds wera smashed and the front of the car was damaged. Inside the car were found the keys to the door of the Patumahoe Hotel bar and Mrs. Harper 's purse.