TRIAL BEGINS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 12, 25 October 1949, Page 4

TRIAL BEGINS

SEAMAN AND CARPENTER

THEFT OR FALSE PRETENCES (P.A. WELLINGTON, This Day. The trial of two men on alternative charges of theft o*: obtaining money by false pretences began in the Supreme Court to-day before the Chief Justice, Sir Humphrey O’Leary. The accused were William John McCrea (47), a painter, and William McDermott (22), a seaman. The sum involved was stated to be £SOO. Mr W. R. Birks, for the Crown, said the accused McCrea, saying he was a ship’s officer, had sold a suit-length for £7 to a Paremata storekeeper, Roy Maurice Aldridge. Mr Birkisi said that McCrea had later told Aldridge he could get cigarettes, up to £SOO worth, from an overseas ship. Aldridge, in company with his wife and another man named McNamara, had subsequently arrived at a hotel with £SOO —eight £SO notes and the remainder in notes of smaller denominations. McCrea, it was alleged, had said the cigarettes were in a bond on the wharf, and that a lorry would be necessary to take them away. He introduced the accused McDermott as the man who would get the cigarettes while he (McCrea) kept an urgent appointment elsewhere. Mr Birks said that Aldridge had gone away to find a' lorry, and that in the meantime McCrea had persuaded Mrs Aldridge to give him the money. Subsequently, after McCrea had left, McDermott had taken Aldridge and McNamara to an overseas ship and told them that the wrong man was on duty, continued Mr Birks. They had been told to come back that evening, but on their arrival at the wharf in the evening no sign could be found of either McDermott or McCrea.

Mr Birks said evidence would be called to show that McCrea had banked £4OO in eight £SO notes bearing the same numbers as those drawn from Aldridge’s bank on the same day, August 17. McCrea had travelled to Sydney, where he had been arrested on August 29. McDermott, continued Mr Birks, had made a statement, that McCrea had been going to hand him “a few pounds’’ for helping him, but McCrea had got away without paying up. When interviewed in Sydney, McCrea had alleged that he was being victimised and threatened to issue a writ for damages on his return to New Zealand. “This is just another version of the old confidence trick,” concluded Mr Birks. Mr W. J. Stacey is appearing for McCrea and Mr G. C. Kent for McDermott.