ROBBERY UNDER ARMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 202, 27 August 1931, Page 8

ROBBERY UNDER ARMS.

MAN AND WOMAN CONFESS.

COMMXTTEB FOB SENTENCE.

ENCOUNTER WITH DETECTIVE

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, Wednesday,

After hearing further evidence this afternoon, Mr. E. Page, S.M., committed for sentence at the next sessions of the Supreme Court in Wellington Jack Morton, alias Jack Winstone, alias George Morton, and Florence Cooper, alias Florence Winstone, who pleaded guilty to three charges of robbery under arms.

Detective A B. Meiklejohn, stationed at New Plymouth, stated that on August 15 he went to the Terminus Hotel, New Plymouth, where the two accused were booked as "Mr. and Mrs. Winstone." With Sergeant McGregor, witness made a search of their room. In a suitcase under the bed he found several cartridges. He also found the revolver produced fully loaded under a pillow on the bed. Later he found an air pistol with two boxes of slugs in a wardrobe. At the police station he interviewed Morton as to his movements during the previous week. In his statement Morton said he had arrived in New Zealand some time ago with his wife by the Aorangi, but had not been able to obtain any work. The two pistols were given to them by a man in the country soon after he arrived in the Dominion. He said he told the man he wanted the revolver for pig-hunting. Continuing, witness stated that Morton said he was concerned in two holdups with a man whose name he would not disclose. After the hold-ups, which Morton described, masks and clothes were thrown into the sea. Morton said he had the revolver and his mate, who lay on the road, had the compressed air pistoL After making the statement Morton told the female accused that he had admitted two hold-ups in Wellington, but that she "was not in it." Woman Tells Story.

Detective Meiklejohn then read a statement he had taken from the female accused on August 8. In this statement the woman said she was staying at the Pier Hotel, Wellington, with her husband, and they had no money. Therefore she suggested that they should go out and "stick up some cars." They bought some old clothes and in the Miramar instance changed into them in an old bach. She lay down on the road, and when a car came along she presented the air pistol, while her husband held up the men with the revolver.

"The car driver had a torch, and flashed it in my face," the woman's statement continued. "He said, 'It is not a real one,' to which I replied, *You will soon know whether it is a real one.' I stuck up the other car which came up and told the man and woman to get out. My husband left the other two men and came over to me and then took the woman's purse. "A man from the first car came and flashed the torch in his face, and then my husband fired a shot. The woman said, 'Be a sport, as you have got the

money.'" After they had changed their clothes and were walking in Miramar, said accused, they met a man whom they knew was a detective, who asked them if they had seen any men. He told them they had better look out, as there were two desperate characters about. They then came back to town and had supper at a. cafe about 9 p.m. "I Am as Much to Blame." Before the Day's Bay hold-up, continued the woman's statement, she and her husband climbed up the hill behind the service station. They were up there all the afternoon. They had planned to hold up a bus after dark, but when they saw the service station they decided right away to rob it instead of holding up the bus. They went on to the hill and changed and then went down to the service station. After putting masks over their faces they forced their way in. After telling the proprietor that there was a man outside— which was not true —and taking the contents of the till, they walked back toward Wellington and caught a bus at Petone.

"I wish to say that I am as much to blame as my husband in the two hold-ups," said accused in concluding her statement.

A number of charges against the two accused still have to be dealt with.

The woman Cooper was remanded to appear at Wanganui on August 31 on a charge of robbing Clifford Thomas Organ of £1 10/ at Wanganui on August 13, and of wounding him by shooting him in the leg.