FOUND NOT GUILTY OF GRAVE CHARGE

NZ Truth, Issue 1142, 20 October 1927, Page 7

FOUND NOT GUILTY OF GRAVE CHARGE

Jury Disbelieves Girl's Sensational Story of What Happened After Midnight Party

AMAZING INTERVIEWS FOLLOW COURT HEARING

THIS remarkable evidence was heard before Mr. Justice Gordon in the Central Criminal Court, Sydney, last week, when the jockey was acquitted. The offence was alleged to have been committed in the early morning of June 5, in a darkened car in a dark laneway at King's Cross, Sydney, whither the pair had driven from a party in a Bondi flat. The victim of the alleged outrage was a tall girl, bold -featured and rather good-looking, and, it was remarked, considerably bigger than the jockey against whom she charged the offence. She was more smartly-dressed than she had been in the lower court, and the change lent an air of assurance to her manner that had not been apparent at her earlier appearance. But she gave her, evidence indistinctly, and on several occasions sobbed and became hysterical. She gave her age as nineteen, and said she boarded at O'Brien Street. Bondi. The girl said she flrst met Cullum at the Casino on June 4, whither she had gone alone. He approached her about 11 o'clock and asked if she would like to go to a party. She demurred, saying that she did not know anybody who was going, but eventually went with him and two

Witness In Tears

other couples to a flat in Curlewis Street. There was dancing, and she had two small whiskies, and they left about 2 a.m. or 2.30. At the Bondi Hotel, Cullum suggested some more drink, and he and another man went in and obtained something. The six of them then took a taxi to King's Cross. On the way Cullum gave the girl a drink of neat whisky out of a flask. She refused this drink at first, but he made her open her mouth, she said. At the Cross they all got out, and he said: "Come along; we'll go in the back entrance." ; She demurred, but he insisted, and they went down a lane, leaving the others. According to her story, he had her by the arm, forcing her along, till they came to where another car was standing. The intention, she said, had been to go to a party at Cullum's flat, and when he told her to get into this other car she objected that he could not drive it. He said he could, and, opening the door, incontinently pushed her into til 6 bSLCIC She sat down, and he followed her in, closing the door. At this point in her evidence the girl broke down and wept, the while the sheriff's officer administered water. "You'd better get her a chair," his honor directed, and she sat down and resumed her weeping. "Feel better now?" asked Crown Prosecutor McKean after a five minutes' interruption. Then, she said, Cullum interfered •with her and she screamed. Cullum said, so she told the court: "If you don't keep quiet I'll break your jaw." He struck her three times, she said, and she knew no more till she came' to at the police station. j Never before that night, she said, | had anything of a similar nature happened to her. Lawyer Abigail (cross-examining) : "You don't want this boy to be convicted, do you?" It was more of a statement than a question, and the girl hesitated before replying: "Not exactly." But she denied having said that, if Lawyer Abigail had not been so hard

To Randwick Races

at the police court, she would not have said all she did. Counsel obtained an admission that early in September, long after the police court case, and not long before the current trial, she and her girl friend had met Cullum, and gone, to the Strand Arcade with him. "Did you tell him," asked counsel: " I'm sorry I had to go on with the case, Owen'?" The girl denied it. Lawyer Abigail: "I'm only asking you to tell the truth." The girl: "I am telling the truth." Didn't you say, if it hadn't been for your auntie, you would not have gone on with it? — No. But the girl admitted that her aunt had been active in pressing the case on. I There was a further meeting I some days later at her home at Bondi, she said, but she denied having admitted then that she was | a willing party, but that she dared not confess because of the opinion of her friends. Here the girl broke down again and there was a further few minutes' interval, during which his honor reassured Lawyer Abigail that he fully appreciated counsel's duty towards his client. Some minutes later there was another temporary breakdown, but the most hysterical outburst did not come until it was suggested to the girl that she had been a far from unwilling party. At this she sobbed and. moaned hysterically, until it ibecame necessary to send her outside and carry on with another witness. On the day after the alleged offence, Cullum had visited the girl at her home, and on the Monday following — King's Birthday — had again called and taken her to his place. From there she went with him to Randwick races, where he was riding, to wait for him, intending afterwards that they should go and see a solicitor. "He asked you to the party?" queried Lawyer Abigail. "Yes," said the girl. And you said "No"?— Yes. But you accepted? — Yes. Lawyer • Abigail asked the same questions about the taxi ride, the drink, about going down the lane, about going to the races and about accepting the coat — and received the same series of answers. When she had said she was not properly dressed for the races, Cullum gave her a valuable fur coat to wear. __ When, after a long interval the girl

(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Sydney Representative.)

Though she had charged Owen Cullum, the well-known New Zealand hurdle jockey, with a most serious offence against her, a nineteen-year-old Sydney girl met him, and, apparently, in no unfriendly manner, discussed the case with him, even after a magistrate had committed him for trial.

returned to the box, Lawyer Abigail referred to this: "He made you a present of that fur coat?" "No," she said. Counsel: Why, didn't they even alter a button to make it fit you? — Yes. "Now," he said, "won't you admit that you were a willing party, that you would never have said anything only for Mr. Harbottle coming on the scene, and that you've been sorry ever since?" "No," said the girl. Joseph Peter Harbottle, a young Englishman, said that about 2.30 or 3 a.m. on June 5, he was awakened in his flat off Darlinghurst Road to hear voices in the lane outside. A girl's voice was shrieking: "Haven't you got a mother of your own?" He went outside and saw a motorcar standing with the lights out. In the back seat there was a man with a girl, with his hand over her mouth, The man was the accused. Harbottle asked: "What's all thc noise about?" The man came out of the car, Harbottle said, leaving the girl there and said: "It's all right; she knows all about it." The girl's face was puffed up; she appeared to be unconscious and in a bad way. Harbottle went to get his shoes on,

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He Heard Screams

and when he came back, he said, saAV the man and girl further down the lane. She seemed to be clinging to the man and, according to Harbottle, he pushed her, with a violent thrust in the face, down on to the runningboard of another car and ran away. Harbottle found a policeman, he said, and arranged have the girl taken to the station. Then, on his way back to .his flat, he said that he saw Cullum and another man, whom Cullum addressed as "Col," coming down the lane. The Englishman said: "You'd better come up to Darlinghurst with me." Cullum, he said, came willingly for a few yards, and then struck him, and the two taking to him, he was downed and viciously assaulted. His two assailants then ran off. Harbottle, however, proved hazy about some of the details he had sworn to in the lower court. The girl friend gave evidence in support of that already given in respect to various meetings with Cullum after the alleged assault. She denied having suggested to the complainant to forfeit her £40 surety and not to appear in court to give evidence. Constable Blench, of Darlinghurst, related how, hearing screams while on duty at King's Cross, he had hurried to a lane-way off Victoria Street, where he saw a girl in the arms of two older women. The girl was hysterical and her face was swollen and her dress torn. She told him, he said: "I have been assaulted by a man named Owen." "I never saw any man," Blench told

on, he went to the girl's place and found Cullum there. "You've got yourself into a fine mess," he said to Cullum. Cullum, he said, agreed;, and asked Lloyd to accompany him and the girls to his home. Cullum elected to give evidence on oath. He described himself as a hurdle and steeple jockey, 22 years of age, and said that he had been over from New Zealand about ten months. On June 4 he had ridden a winner, Suncoil, at Rosehill, and that evening, at the invitation of "some of the boys,y went to the Casino. He was very seldom drunk, he said, but, flushed with victory apparently, had some drink that night. At the Casino he met the girl, liked her and they had the last dance together, i Afterwards Lloyd proposed a party at Curlewis Street and they went together. They shared dancing, whisky, cigarettes and kisses, said Cullum, and about 2 o'clock they went to the hotel and obtained some whisky and port wine. « Lloyd told them about another party at King's Cross and they caught a taxi. The girl, said Cullum, was sitting on his knee in the cab and when he offered her a drink she had some. Lawyer Abigail: She was a bit heavy? — Too right. When they got out of the car, he went on, Lloyd suggested that he should go round fhe back way and he did so, with the girl. Seeing a car in the lane Cullum said that he suggested getting in, but

Outturn's Evidence

Lawyer Abigail, "but on the way down I heard a man say: 'You're needed down here, constable.' " Sergeant Best, of Darlinghurst, said that when he saw the girl early on June 5 she seemed to be quite selfpossessed. He saw Cullum later that morning at his home in Grosvenor Street, South Kensington. "I did not assault her," Cullum told him; "I intended to do something, but she was that drunk she fell on the running-board." When told to come to the police station, the jockey said: "This is a bit rough. I've only been five months from New Zealand and this was about the second time I've been out." Cullum, said the sergeant, bore a very good character. Hugh George Lloyd, who was a member of the early morning party to King's Cross, said that in the taxi The girl had been perfectly sober. At King's Cross he saw Cullum and the girl walk away, and, later, when he went looking for the jockey found the girl in a laneway, her lips puffed up, and in a very hysterical state. Later he accompanied her and the constable to the station. The following Monday, Lloyd went

doing so the girl slipped and fell and hurt her face. He gave her a drop of whisky as he thought it would do her good. Whatever he did then, he said, she acquiesced in. Then, went on Cullum, a man came and said: "What are you doing there?" and told him to get out. He did so. The man asked a couple more questions and then went into the house. The girl, according to Cullum, was hysterical and said: "We're caught!" They walked further down and she was hysterical.^ He told her he would have to go back to the car and get his coat. When he did so, Cullum told the court, the man was there again and Btarted to "belt" into him and he just defended himself. Cullum then related the amazing interviews which took place between himself and the girl after the charge had been laid against him and the case heard in the lower court. One day, early in September, he said, a man called at his home with a mesbage and he went to Farmer's corner — having first seen Detective Missingham. The girl and her girl friend met him there and they repaired to the Strand Arcade.

Amazing Interviews

"I'm very sorry that the case has to go on," he said the girl told him, "but how can I get out of it? My auntie forced me to go on with it.'' "If my girl friend forfeits ner surety of £40," she asked, "would the case fall through then?" Cullum said: "No, that would be no good." Detective Missingham came up then and spoke to him. They parted at Farmer's corner, the girl reminding him: "Be careful of any communications you make with me, because of my auntie." Some days later, he said, he received a message and went to the house in O'Brien Street, where the girl invited him inside. She asked, according to his story. "Have you found out any way I can get out of the case?" He said: "No; you'll have to go on with it." "I'm sorry," she said, so he related, and hS replied: "So am I." "Mr. Abigail was awfully hard on me in the court, and if he had not been so I would not have said half I did say," she told him. "You know very well that what you said in court wasn't true," he replied. She then said: "I never consented the way you said I did. You struck me." "No," he said, "you fell into the car." To which she replied: "I know I had some whiskies, but I didn't know I was that drunk. I don't remember." She said she had received so much advice she didn't know what to do. "Go on and tell the truth in the witness-box and say you consented," he persisted, "because you did." "Oh," was her reply, "I couldn't say that, because my friends would think I was a bad girl." When a drive was then suggested, the lady of the house advised the girl not to go, because "some of Abigail's men" might be about. Going back to the Monday immediately following the alleged offence, \ Cullum said that he made the girl a present of the fur coat and she also had tea with him at the races. Her face was quite all right that day. He went to bed about 9 o'clock that Monday night, he said, and not long afterwards a Blue cab arrived with the girl, her brother-in-law and her girl friend.

Willing To Marry

He went out in his pyjamas, and the brother-in-law spoke to him: "There's only one way; you'd better come to Grafton and marry her." (The girl's parents lived at Grafton.) Cullum said he was ready to marry her and the other man told him she was equally willing. "All right," said the jockey and went inside to get dressed. Then they went back to the Checker cab garage, Cullum related, and waited two or three hours for a cab to take them to Grafton. The girl then said: "If we don't go to-night my auntie will take me away." She remained with him, Cullum told the judge — resting in the affectionate embrace which might be expected in an engaged couple — in the back of the Blue cab while the Checker was being prepared. But when all was ready, .she said, according to Cullum: "No, I don't think we'll' go to-night; we'll go tomorrow." After supper they kissed good -night and parted. "Are you really fond of her?" Crown Prosecutor McKean opened his crossexamination. Cullum: Yes, I like the girl. And you were prepared to marry her?— Yes. The jury had retired for an hour when they returned, and elicited from Sergeant Best the information that when he saw the girl on the morning of June 5 she was under the influence of liquor. After further consideration, Cullum was acquitted.