CONSTABLE GUTTERIDGE’S MURDER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3813, 3 July 1928, Page 1

CONSTABLE GUTTERIDGE’S MURDER.

AMAZING STORY OF BROWNE’S LIFE. The life story of Frederick Guy Browne who, with William Henry Kennedy 7 , was recently sentenced to death for the murder of Constable Gutteridgo, at Old Bailey 7, England, disclosed the fact that he led a diabolical life of crime right from early childhood. He was ably backed up by Kennedy and the sentence ol death removes from society two of the most brutal, evil, stick-at-nothing desperadoes who were ever pulled from the vortex of crime to stand in the shadow of the gallows. If ever a devil existed in human shape and constitution, lie is Frederick Guy Browne. Browne counted blood no more than water; he held human life cheaper than a secondhand car. He would unhesitatingly have shot down half-a-dozen men to get his hand on a motor-car that could be converted into cash. Early in life he was known as the hoy bandit, chiefly because the villagers were aware that he carried a loaded revolver and used the telegraph poles on the highway for his targets. His career, which has ended in the blackest of all crimes began with petty pilfering. From small things it grew to wholesale thefts of bicycles. Browne had an iithorn gift for mechanics. When ho war, 1(5 lie could so transform and convert a stolen bicycle that its actual owner would never recognise it. With amazing ingenuity he connected a wire to an electric battery in his home and ran it to a handle of the front door. The police went after Master Frederick Guy Browne one day for stealing a bike, and a, constable who grasped that handle to turn the lock got a shock that sent him staggering back to the roadway. When bicycles were ton paltry to steal he turned to motorcycles and motor-cars. Entirely self-taught in the engineering craft, Browne became a first-class mechanic. He knew every make of car inside out —every “gadget," every tool. There was no make he could not drive; there was none ho could not camouflage into something entirely different. But before

lie became a motor thief the young desperado of Eynsham had served a sentence of 12 months’ hard labour for stealing a bicycle. When he heard his punishment Browne turned to the detective who arrested him, and said, “If one of your lot ever try to get me again, I WILL SHOOT HIM STONE DEAD.” Browne came out from his first prison sentence, in 1912, and stole his first car within 48 hours. Then he took a Southend garage, in partnership, and was suddenly struck with the possibilities of an insurance swindle. He turned incendiary. There were about a dozen ears in the garage, valueless and fit only for the scrap-heap. Browno spent one complete afternoon saturating these cars with petrol and filling the garage with inflammable material, like celluloid and waste. Late that night Browne called his partner, told-him everything was ready, and all he had to do was to give a ring on the telephone, and “Up she goes!” The couple went down by the first available train to Bournemouth and stayed at a well-known hotel. They told the chambermaid they wanted to lie up witli the sun for a swim. “We wore called about 4 o’clock in the morning,” said the partner, “and Browne immediately went to the ’phone and asked for the gaxago number. He was told there was no reply. Browne laifghed, and, turning to me, remarked, l I did not expend one, did you?’ The hammer of the telephone bell made contact with an ingenious device, invented by Browne, which spt fire to the garage. Just before mid-day Browne received a telegram at the hotel.' He opened it with apparent unconcern.. It read: ‘Garage burned down. Return at once.’ He exclaimed in the lounge, ‘Good Lord,

I’m ruined! I must get back at once!’ Browne’s work had been completely successful, and the insurance company paid out some thousands of pounds without qiiestion within the course of a few weeks.” HOW BROWSNE BLUFFED THE, POLICE. With his share of the money Browiyj bought a large bungalow. He immediately had constructed there a large private garage which housed some half .a dozen cais. These, and the property, were, m fact heavily insured, and on Midsummer Day, 1922, this garage and the cars were totally destroyed by fire.. The outbreak was the work of Browne, who, in this instance, utilised an alarm clock. The alarm was set to go oft' at mid-day, so that the flames would not show up as they would in the hours of dark- ■

ness.' Again Browne received his cheque from the insurance company. Before their campaign of arson, this same partner and Browne had been the principals in a thrilling brush with the police in Brixton. Browne then was living above a garage, and the detectives had occasion to search his place for stolen motor accessories and spare parts. As the detectives rushed the stairs from a side entrance, Browne sprang from Ids living-room and confronted them, a revolver in each hand. Meanwhile the partner and confederate had arrived by a secret door, and, before the detectives could enter any of the rooms, rapidly removed all the stolen goods to a car outside. Not once, but half a dqzen times Browne shouted down the ’ltairs to the detectives* “Stand back, the lot of you. The first man that comes up I’ll shoot.’’ Then, to his partner he whispered, ‘Here, take these and get out.’ Quickly he passed to him the two revolvers, and the confederate vanished. Browne, with a mocking laugh, finally told the police he had been bluffing, and invited them upstairs. The

DETECTIVES SEARCHED HIGH AND LOW. but there was no trace of the property they sought, nor, of course, of any weapons. The police were in a quandary, but they decided to charge Browne with holding them up by presenting the revolvers at them. At Lambeth Police-court the ' magistrate asked the officers whether they had found any revolver to corroborate their account of the affair. They answsered, ‘No,’ and the magistrate asked how they co- ■ uld have been held up if, after a complete search of the whole of the building, there was no sign of a gun. ( Browne was remanded on bail, and another examination was made of the garage; but again no firearms were found. At the next hearing

the magistrate inquired of Browne, ‘Did you threaten to shoot down these officers?’ ‘Yes,’ he responded with amazing coolness. ‘My wife was just coming out to the bathroom, and these officers came blustering up the stairs. I told them I would have shot them down, and I would have done so,’ he exclaimed, with a dramatic gesture, ‘if they had persisted in advancing.’ ‘You mean you would have thrown them down?’ asked-the magistrate. ‘Yes,’ answered Browne ‘I would have ‘shot’ them ctewn like any'’ other husband would have done,’ lie added. ‘Had you any firearms?’ pursued the magistrate. ‘No, I lmcl not a gun in the place/ came the reply. Thereupon the magistrate discharged him. After the Southend lire Browne went out to the business and back to car-stealing. He concocted another swindle, but overreached himself this time, and, at the Old Bailey, got his first stretch of penal servitude —four years. That was in 1923. They sent him to Parkhurst; but Parkhurst could not hold Frederick Guy Browne. He was

THE TERROR OR EVERY WIARDER; the despair of the governor. He scolfed at authority, and he showed his contempt for discipline by smashing up his cell. For two months they put his on bread and water; but the smouldering fees of hate burned fiercer than ever. Similarly his cunning grew finer and deeper. He pretended at length to surrender to authority, and the warders V'ere completely deceived. Now they will, always [remember Frederick Browne as the convict who became a forger within the walls of Parkhurst, and the man no cell could hold. Before Browne had been long in penal servitude the officials were staggered to discover that spurious half-crowns were in circulation inside and outside the prison—even as far ns Newport. By some process, unknown to this day, Browne ‘manufactured’ tliesei coins in the blacksmiths’ and fitters’ shop where he was employed, and, although most of the other convicts were in the distribution scheme, none of them gave him away. With colossal effrontery he actually buried the iCsiduc of the ‘snide’ —the criminal slang for base money —in the garden of the prison doctor’s house!