"MOST VICIOUS FORM OF BLACKMAIL"

NZ Truth, Issue 1302, 27 November 1930, Page 7

"MOST VICIOUS FORM OF BLACKMAIL"

♦ : ■ ASHTON SENT TO GAOL FOR CRUEL CRIME WORST FORM (From "N.Z. Truth's" Dunedin Rep.) WHEN Albert George Ashton, whose " attempts at blackmail at Milton j were reported m a recent . issue of "Truth," appeared before Mr. Justice Kennedy for sentence oh charges of demanding money with menaces with intent to steal and with false pretences, his counsel, Mr. R. R. .M. Rutherford, stressed the prisoner's previous good behavior and stated that both recipients of Ashton's letters gave him a good character. Counsel suggested that the attempts by Ashton were dictated more* by deI sire to hurt the feelings of his victims than with an intention of obtaining financial gain. The Crown Prosecutor declared that he was surprised at the last suggestion, as both letters showed both criminal intention and imagination. Blackmail was one of the worst crimes m the calendar, stated the Crown Prosecutor, and Ashton had used it m its worst form by affecting sympathy for recently bereaved parents, yet libelling their dead son to them. His Honor's comment was: "In plain language you blackmailed a man before his marriage and after it; a cruel and odious crime. "In the other case you used a most | vicious form of blackmail affecting family relations and did not hesitate to impugn to his parents the honor of a recently deceased young man. "It also appears, although you were not charged with the offence, that you stole a postal packet m transit. The only fijting punishment for adults is a term of hard labor. I have taken into consideration the fact that you are only nineteen, but this is no case for probation but for institutional treatment." Ashton was sentenced to two years' Borstal on both charges, the sentences to be concurrent. A