£10,000 ROBBERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 185, 7 August 1935, Page 12

£10,000 ROBBERY.

FAKED MAIL BAG.

TRUMPED-UP EVIDENCE?

TRIAL AFTER FOTHt YEARS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, August 1,

On May 28, 1931, the people of Sydney ■were thrown into something like consternation by the news that the sum of £10,000 in Commonwealth Bank notes had been stolen from the Canberra mail train on the previous Thursday night. By an ingenious trick a '•'fake" mail bag had been substituted for the G.P.O. bag containing the money, and the- robbers had got clean away.

The police cast about in various directions, and among the "suspects" whom they marked down was a motor driver, Joseph Harold Ryan, familiarly known to a certain section of Sydney's population and to the C.1.8. detectives as '•Joe." Ryan was arrested, with others, and while" he was on remand the police secured certain evidence which appeared i to connect him with another remark- . able train robbery—the looting of the Mudgee mail on April 8, 1930. In that ■ case two men assaulted and disabled the guard, and got away with bullion and specie to the value of over £18,000. Ryan was now charged as an accomplice in the Mudgee mail robbery as well. But he was allowed out on bail, • and before he could be tried, ho absconded, and the case at least tem- • porarily broke down. Seen When "Missing." A great deal of mystery attached to the Canberra mail case, more especially in regard to the action of the police. Some months after they had announced 3 that Ryan had failed to surrender to his bail and had left the country, it was a matter of common knowledge that Ryan had been seen in Sydney, and it was said that while the police were supposed to be "combing the under- ," world" for him he might be observed ' any fine afternoon polishing his finger- • nails—after the best American gangster tradition—on the sunny side of the road ■ at King's Cross. It would now appear that the police were not at all sure of S their ground in regard to the charges !; against Ryan, and their excuse, that one ' of their principal witnesses had disappeared, was probably genuine. However, Ryan, after remaining "in V._smoke" for some time round DarlingJmrst, got away to America, and the "police, though they knew more or less certainly where he was, made no attempt to follow him or to get him extradited. At last Ryan seems to have J concluded that he had better not allow these charges to remain hanging over him indefinitely, and it is alleged that he communicated with the authorities offering to return and stand his trial. However this may be, he did come back I from the United States a few weeks ago, he was duly put on trial, and. the case, in which an immense amount of public interest was taken, has just concluded. . Dummy Bag Substitutes. The charge against Ryan as set out by the Crown was based partly upon the testimony of alleged accomplices and partly on the fact that £100 of the stolen money—the numbers of the notes being on record—was said to have been found in Ryan's room. As to the method adopted by the robbers in bringing off their coup—it seems that the mail train stopped between Sydney and Canberra at Queanbeyan, where the mail bag was taken out. . Usually a porter was left in charge of such valuable freight, but on that particular . night this official had been called away for a few minutes, and in that brief space the dummy bag was substituted for the mail bag and the robbers got away. As the money could not reach Canberra in the ordinary way for another hour those responsible for this audacious crime had ample time to get clear before the loss was discovered.

But the substitution of a "fake" mail bag suggested careful preliminary planning and on this point the police relied upon two witnesses who were supposed to have "turned King's evidence." One of these, a small farmer named Morris, asserted that Ryan had come in his car to Jamestown, where Morris lived—l7o miles from Queanbeyan—and induced Morris to allow him to bury the stolen notes on his land.

Money Dug Up On Farm. As a matter of fact, £7600 of the money was actually dug up at the spot indicated by Morris after he had given information to the police. But Morris also asserted that to his knowledge, Ryan had planned the robbery in great detail months before, that he had gone with Ryan to the house of a postal ■official named Lynch in Sydney and that they had discussed this device of a "dummy" mail bag and had agreed that it was feasible.

In these allegations Morris was supported by a man named Jacobs, who declared that he, too, had discussed the plans for the robbery several weeks before it happened with Lynch and Ryan. These were the main features of the Crown case, and obviously everything depended on the credulity of their witnesses. Morris and Jacobs.

Against all this, Ryan stoutly maintained that he had nothing to do with the robbery, and that Jacobs and Morris were deliberately lying, that he had never seen Lynch in *his life before he was arrested, and that the case worked up by the police, on the authority of their two witnesses, was unadulterated fiction.

u Judge's Scathing Criticism. Possibly Eyan's denials might not have made much impression on the jury if it had not been for the character of the witnesses and the way in which they had given their evidence. To begin with, Jacobs had a bad "record" —six years on different charges —and Morris seems to have associated largely with very dubious people. During the course of the trial Judge Curlewis formed eo poor an opinion of their testimony and its value that he described them as men lost to all sense of honour and decency, and said warningly to"the Commissioner of Police: "I don't know whether you think the jury will convict anybody on Jacobs' evidence alone." Mr. Curtis, K.C., who appeared for Ryan, and who has a great natural flow of invective, pilloried these two witnesses before the Court, and denounced them to the jury as perjurors on whose evidence they "could not dare to hang a dog." The main strength of Ryan's case, however, lay in the important fact that Lynch, whom Morris had implicated as Lthe postal official conspiring with Byail to plan the robbery, had been arrested, 25S£l ltfll C ° mpliCity ' and durably

Postal Official Reinstated. Happily for Ryan he was able to call Lynch ae a witness in his own favour, and Lynch testified not only that he had not known Ryan and had never seen him till confronted with him by the police, but that after his own acquittal he had been reinstated in the postal service without a stain upon his character. All this naturally made an impression on the jury, and after Lynch's testimony had been heard no one can have been much, surprised to learn that the verdict was "not guilty." So far as this Canberra mail case is concerned, Ryan is thus declared innocent. But he was returned to the custody of the police, which presumably means that other charges, bearing probably on the Mudgee mail robbery of 1930, arc being preferred against him. I have' no intention of discussing this dramatic crime at present, nor is it desirable to consider Ryan's record just now, but he has certainly had intimate associations and affiliations with our "under-world," and the police apparently believe that they have in him one of those "master minds" who, keeping clear of all direct complicity in crime themselves, are able to use weaker and loss intelligent criminals for their own purposes. Whether these suspicions and insinuations are well-founded or not, they will certainly add a special and peculiar interest to Ryan's next public appearance, if it happens to be in a Court of Justice.