RACKETEERING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 207, 2 September 1936, Page 16

RACKETEERING.

GROWING SYDNEY EVIL MURDER SUSPECTS ARRESTED UNDERWORLD WARFARE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 26. On August 18 "Hoppy" Gardner, a pensonage well known to the police and a familiar figure on- the borderline of our "underworld," was shot by an unknown assailant." He died in hospital three days later and was buried in Rookwood cemetery with circumstances recalling some of the More picturesque features of A 1 Capone'a dramatic career.

The hearse' was followed by many hundreds of people and the grave was covered with wreaths and flowers and no doubt some of these offerings were the gifts of men who had good reason to know how and why the lamented "Hoppy" came by his end. The police worked vigorously on the. case, but the men and women whom they interviewed declined for obvious rea soils to "go looking for trouble" —especially as "Hoppy" himself, who presumably knew all about it, had refused to "come clean" and had preserved to the encl. "the impenetrable silence of the underworld."

However, the detectives of the C.J.B. are pertinacious and clever; and they have at least succeeded in , "roping in" two suspects. Two labourers, Plaisted and Kelly, have, been arrested and formally charged with the murder of Gardner, and "they have been remanded till August 31. Whether these men are guilty or not, the police attach considerable importance to their examination, for they are inclined to believe that Gardner's death was the outcome of one the long-standing feuds'' that render the lives of Our gangsters so painfully precarious. Even if the case against the men breaks down, their" trial may help to throw some light upon the conditions now prevailing in those lower strata of social life which underlie the civilised and law-abiding externals of our great city. Overstepping the Mark. It would seem that most of the feuds and vendettas that have recently convulsed our underworld have grown out of this system of "protection." To quote the "Daily Telegraph" again, "A kind of block system has grown up whereby the parasite comes to regard a certain area as his own province and all the starting price, men within it as his special clientele. It is when one of these overlords oversteps his boundary and, through greed or bravado, exacts a toll from a rival's client, that trouble begins."

The "protector," of course,' lias his reputation as a.:-"tough guy" and an expert gunman to consider; and he may stand to lose quite a substantial income, estimated by the C.1.8. at anything from £15 or £20 a week upward. He therefore calls ujion liis associates to back him, and so gangs are formed, organised and led for special purposes, including robbery and murder, just as definitely as the far less dangerous "pushes" of half a century ago. Of course ttie "protector" and tlie professional gunman do not have it all their own way. Sometimes- the betting man turns upon his persecutors, and the "protector" may suffer. Not long ago three bookies -who, indulge in "starting price" work, and enjoy a. sound reputation as "all in" fighters, decided to break of '.'/protector," and it -.is, possible 'rtha't -the curious incident in which "Hoppy," Gardner said ; to have figured a few days b&fore. his death —a fusillade: o£-bullets through a glass door in a suburban hotel—might have been. traced t6 the "revolt." -jr. More Violent Crimes- . J . Of course, such conjectured may be profitless, but the fact remain's that our under-world seems to be seething just now ; with the .impiilses thtft- nearly always find vent in violent crime; and as the "Daily Telegraph" puts it, in a. phrase that should appeal tojthe imagination of New Zealand readers, "with less warning than the "geysers of Rotorua give, there is- likely to be another eruption." . By way of comment upon these ominous warnings, I may refer briefly to a. number of violent crimes perpetuated in Sydney- within the past four days. There is no necessary connection between .these < misdeeds and the main current.of:'-leven'tg.fn- bur underworld, but they'illustrate -impressively enough the grpwing.iteridenCy toward criminal violence here, and particularly the increasing popularity of "gun-play." About a week ago, in one evening, three shopkeepers in Glebe Road were held up by men who produced revolvers and threatened; to "fill them with lead" unless their demands were at once complied with. During the past week Ralph. Lauri, proprietor of the Rea Social Club, a . well-known rendezvous in Bourke Street, Darlinghurst, was shot and'seriously wounded. He had found it necessary to turn out two men.whp ; were drunk and had become abusive; and when one of them came back, called him to the door and opened fire, a second man hiding in the shadow of the stairs, deliberately "picked off" Laurie from a distance. As usual, everybody who might have been expected to see what happened,'or to know something about the quarrel, at once became conveniently deaf and dumb. Gun Tight in Street. An even -more startling episode was reported /from Redfern last Saturday night a regular battle took place in Botany- Street between the occupants of a taxi and a solitary marksman stationed on a neighbouring balcony. The whole incident reads like a page out of .Chicago's most lurid annals. One, John Hourigan, who lives in Botany Street, was called to his door by a knock and was confronted by a man who told him that he was wanted in the street. Hourigan walked with his visitor some twenty yards to a waiting taxi and a second man sprang from it, pushed a sawn-off shotgun into Hourigan's wbs and ordered him to jump inside. Hourigan pushed off his assailant, swung the gun aside—it exploded as he struck it —and he bolted back .'into his house. At the sound of the shot a man armed -with - a -repeating rifle appeared on a balcony - close by and fired deliberately a.t the. taxi. The fire was returned . and several; shots more came from, the, balcony before the men in the taxi. sped away. Hourigan has not said much about the matter, except that the men had 'tried to kidnap him —apparently intending >to "take, him for, a ride." The police know that Hourigan's. brother was shot in -the face by a gunman on a passing.t-axi some months ago and, the 'presence of the marksman with the rifle, evidently-expeeting such eventualities, "in : 'tb'e house nearby, at least suggests that this little "shooting match" presents one phase of the many vendettas that have made the lives of FO many gunmen "nasty, brutish and hort."