CROOK CONFESSES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 10 (Supplement)

CROOK CONFESSES.

SEQUEL TO DEATH SENTENCE. "Tricks" Younger, self-confessed crook, the man who knows the underworld from A to Z and back again, is forgetting the whole alphabet. He's through with crime for good. After eleven years of easy money as burglar, safe blower, "con." man and car bandit, he is quitting because of a grim warning. His partner in crime, "Curly" Martin, is serving a life sentence fpr murder— and the realisation that lie might well be sharing Martin's fate has left Younger nrmly determined to go straight for the rest of his life.

Younger was released from Winchester prison after serving an 18-month sentence for cheque frauds, and it was while he was there that he heard that his friend, the man who had "apprenticed" him in crime, had been sentenced to death. "Curly" Martin, together with Ross and Ansell, was sentenced to death for the murder of a Croydon woman last year. His companions appealed successfully, and Martin was later reprieved. "Tricks" Younger learned these facts from a copy of "The People," which he managed to emuggle into prison. "And then and there," he said, "I swore that I was through with crime for good. And here's why. I knew that luck, and luck alone, had saved me from standing in the dock with Martin charged with murder.

"Curly and I had planned to rob that house months before, when we heard that the old lady kept £1500 in cash there, and if I had not been arrested for my cheque frauds I should have been with him when she was killed.

"Curly" Martin was the man who first "apprenticed" Younger to crime. He was friendly with Younger's sister, and one night when he went home with her "Tricks" noticed that he had a fat roll of notes in his pocket. /"I asked him where it had come from," he said, "and carelessly he said: 'Oh, I did a little job last night.' I was a furniture salesman, but I was young and foolish and I fell for the thrill and adventurous life Curly led. That same night I went out with him and we got away with a £90 haul. From that time I never did another honest day's work. Night after night Curly and I went out house-breaking, sometimes entering as many as five or six houses in one evening. "We stole jewellery, blew safes, staged smash-and-grab raids—and although from time to time we were caught and sentenced, I always went back to the game. In the last eleven years I have committed hundreds of crimes, stolen thousands of pounds' worth of property, living recklessly, spending freely, because I could always go out and steal more.

"After one successful job I hired a car and spent £900 in less than five weeks, putting my last £90 on a Derby also ran. It was a life full of adventure and thrills.

"But that's over and done with," he said. "For eleven years Curly and 1 worked together, and I stuck with him because he was an artist with a jemmy. There was nothing in the world he couldn't open with his stick. And where has it got him? In for life, counting himself fortunate to have escaped the rope. That's warning enough for me."