Smashing Up a Daring Bandit Gang

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 974, 17 May 1930, Page 18

Smashing Up a Daring Bandit Gang

Girl’s Exposure of “Dead Easy Job” .. . Judge

Speaks His Mind . . . Warders Rebuked in Court . . .

L'TSPOKEN defence by yjSK a judge of a London girl's integrity and ■LWnWyJB truthfulness, and scatli’LfSfiUlßßLj ing criticism of the defence in declining to support by evidence their attitude taken up in cross-examination, marked the close of an amazing bandit trial at Newcastle Assizes.

This girl, still in her teens, was the principal witness in the case for the Crown, becanse she swore to an incriminating letter she had seen and to a conversation in which one of the bandits had described robbery on the highway as “a dead easy job.” In cross-examination, the defence sought to discredit her evidence as the revenge of “a woman scorned.” because of a break in her friendship with one of the prisoners. When he came to sum up Mr. Justice Charles reminded the jury that the girl had been held up as a lying, perjured blackguard, but when the defence had the opportunity they refrained deliberately from asking for sworn testimony from witnesses "thev dared not call.” CAREFULLY PLANNED A stolen motor-car, daylight robbery, carefully planned and daringly executed, a lightning dash from one end of the country to the other, and finally a pretty girl who, it is alleged, “gave the show away,” figured in one stage or other of this extraordinary trial. The five prisoners were described in the indictment as George Watkins. 22. umbrella maker: George Stark, alias Baker and Rates, of London: Frederick Edward Turner. 20. motor mechanic: Albert Elliott. r>o. labourer: May Smith, 35, housekeeper to Elliott. The four men were .jointly charged with:

Robbing, with violence, a 14-year-old : boy named Edward McArdle of a bag j containing £193 19s 9d: Stark, Turner and Watkins with j stealing a four-seater car from out-: side the Itoyal Automobile Club, in j Pall Mall, London, and Elliott and the woman Smith with | stealing sample of silk. All of them pleaded not guilty. ! When the case for the prosecution j was being unfolded, Mr. Justice j Charles startled the court with the re- j mark: “A woman prisoner has left the dock without my permission—a most amazing thing.” Officials proceeded to whisper ex- ; planations, but the judge only frowned and waited silently for the woman’s j return. As a matter of fact there was no actual dock in this particular court, but the five accused had been ranged in a row on a long bench, three warders guarding the four men and a very young wardress having charge of the woman. "WARDRESS, STAND UP!” When the wardress and the female accused returned to court and resumed their places at the end of the row, the judge exclaimed. “Wardress, stand up.” The woman obeyed, and the judge proceeded: “Wardress, what do you mean by taking a prisoner out of the dock without my leave?” The wardress, surprised and confused, murmured that she had asked permission from a senior officer —a warder. Eventually the judge had three warders before him and told them that people who did that sort of thing were not fit to be in the prison service. He would find out. His Lordship then asked to be supplied with the names of the wardress and warder, gave instructions for two others to be sent for to take their places, and announced, “I shall want to see the governor of the prison without fail in my room.”

Mr. Paley Scott, for the prosecution, explained that on November 18 the boy, McArdle, was sent by the manager of the Cowgate branch of the Co-operative Society into Newcastle with a bag containing £193, to be paid into the bank. The boy also carried a small parcel of store cheques and certain documents. He had to walk about 200 yards to reach the bus stop, and while on his way noticed at the corner of Mayfield Terrace a maroon-coloured motor-car stolen from outside the Royal Automobile Club in London—standing near the pavement with the engine running. He also observed a couple of men standing by the side of the car. After he had passed the men McArdle dis covered that the strangers were following him, and also that the motorcar was crawling along in the same direction. The boy quickened his steps, and then walked across the road. Scarcely had he reached the other side when one of the two men got in front of him and the other hit him on the head from behind, and at the same time grabbed at his bag and the parcel. McArdle fell to the ground, and, although lie tried to hold one of the men by his trouser leg, the man got free. The couple jumped into the waiting car, which then made oil at a rapid speed.

THE DRAMA SHIFTS Then the drama shifted to London. In Bloxam Street, off the Mile End Road, proceeded Mr. Paley Scott, there lived Mrs. Davis and her daughter. Dora Morris. The latter knew Turner, Stark and Watkins, all of whom visited her mother’s house. Miss Morris, added counsel, was shown by Turner a letter from Stark asking him to go to Newcastle to “do a job,” and mentioning something about a boy carrying a bag. The day after the robbery Turner and Stark were in Affleck Street, Islington, and Turner was alleged to have said, “We have been to Newcastle. It ivas dead easy.” At the same time he produced from his pocket a roll of Treasury notes. At a later date there came into the possession of the police a letter in Stark’s handwriting and addressed from Grange Street, Horton. The letter read: — I have wondered how things are. Everything has gone wrong here. Somebody went and put away Freddie (the name by which Turner was known), and he was an*ested on November 21 charged with stealing a car in London, but he got out after a week’s remand. I have cleared out and am lying low in the name of Bates. Burn this letter when you have read it. In conclusion, counsel mentioned that a quantity of stolen silk was found in the house at Newcastle occui pied by Elliott and the man Smith. SENSATIONAL EVIDENCE Sensational evidence was then given by Dora Morris, the London girl alj ready referred to. A dark-eyed, i pleasant-looking young woman of 19, I wearing a fur-trimmed green coat, she I told counsel that one day last Novem- : ber Turner showed her a letter sent j by Stark, who had gone to Newcastle. In the letter Stark asked “Freddie” to go to Newcastle to “do a job,” and mentioned something about a boy going to a bank with a bag.

There was also a reference to the way the boy would be going, and a phrase: “You call yourself a crook: you haven’t enough pluck to be a crook.”

On' November 19 Turner and Stark arrived at the former’s home carrying a suit-case. They had been to Newcastle, they said, and the job was “dead easy.” Turner asked his mother if she had seen Watkihs. She replied, “Yes,” and Turner tlien wanted to know if he had given her any money. When Mrs. Turner told him “No,” he pulled out of his trousers pocket a roll of £1 notes, .and offered his mother one, but she told him she did not want it. 11l searching cross-examination by Mr. Norman Harper, for Stark, and Mr. Cairns, for Turner, the girl maintained that she actually saw the letter referred to, that the conversations she had repeated took place, and that her evidence was not “a pack of lies,” but the truth.

Mr. Cairns: Did you have a certain amount of affection for Turner, and he for you, until you quarrelled?—No.

Two months before this affair did he not tell you the friendship must cease, and did you not reply that you were going to get your own back on him?—No.

WITNESS DEFENDED Defending counsel called none of the accused to the witness-box, and this fact was commented upon by Mr. Justice Charles ill his summing up. “It has been suggested,” observed his lordship, “that Miss Morris is a lying woman who lias come from London to tell lies because she is supposed to have some quarrel with one of the prisoners, but of which there is no proof. She has come here, it is said, deliberately to lie in a most extraordinary way, and to repeat a conversation which it is maintained did not take place at all. In the absence of any evidence it is for you, the jury, to say that there is not the least jusification for any such suggestion. If prisoners had had the courage to leave the dock they could have gone into the witness-box and sworn that they were not the persons alleged. I say this—and I say it after the gravest consideration—that it is not in accordance with the best practices of our profession to make ail attack upon a witness, a blank attack suggesting that the whole of this girl's evidence is a fabrication, when all the time there are witnesses at hand who might support the charge, hut whom you dare not call.” The jury found the four male prisoners guilty of robbery with violence, and Stark, Turner and Watkins guilty also of stealing the motor-car. The woman Smith, by the direction, of the Judge, was acquitted. THEIR RECORDS Detective-sergeant Lewington, giving the records of prisoners, related that Stark, at Clerkenwell, in August, 1928, pleaded guilty to three indictments connected with the theft of a m'otor-car, and was remanded on bail to come up for sentence. While out on bail lie was arrested, charged with stealing' another motor-car in the West End. Sent for trial, he pleaded guilty and received 12 months’ hard labour. Turner, at Clerkenwell in August, 1925, was sentenced to two terms of six months, to run' concurrently, for stealing motor-cars. When witness ’ jumped on to the runningboard to arrest_ him, there were two men in the car, one of whom threw a jemmy at the detective. AH three prisoners were members of a dangerous gang of motor-car thieves who infested the King’s Cross district of London.

Mr. Justice Charles, expressing the opinion that Elliott had been led into the affair by Stark, whom he regarded as a very bad man, sentenced Elliott to 12 months’ hard labour. Addressing Stark, Watkins and Turner, his lordship remarked: “I believe the three of you are a dangerous gang of young men. You, q’urner and Stark, will be sentenced to three years’ penal servitude, and you, Watkins, who are not so bad, will go to IS months’ hard labour.”