GAOL FOR LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 44, 22 February 1937, Page 9

GAOL FOR LIFE.

BROTHER KILLERS.

"NEVER TO BE RELEASED."

DUCK EGGS AS CLUE.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDXEY, February 18

On October 20 last an old-age pensioner, Robert McKenzie, who lived in a shack at Roekley, near Bathurst, was robbed and murdered. The police arrested two brothers, Thomas and Denis Ryan, who were duly charged with murder and sentenced to death.

. The condemned men appealed against the sentence on various grounds—chiefly because it had been found impossible to decide which man actually committed the murder —but their appeal was rejected. Then their case came before the Executive and Ministers seemed strangely reluctant to allow the law to take it<s course. Several Cabinet meetings were held at long intervals, till protests were made in the public Press against further delays on the ground that it was cruel to keep even murderers in such extreme suspense. At last this week a decision' was reached. The Ryans are not to hang, but they are to be imprisoned for the term of their natural lives, and their papers are marked "never to be released."

The murder of old McKenzie presented several remarkable features. After he had been disposed of and his body had been thrown into the river, his belongings had been plundered and his hut and all his remaining possessions destroyed. The police could at first f;nd no clue worth following till Detective Allmond, turning over the ashes* of the ruined "hnmpv," came upon a billy can which contained 11 duck eggs boiled hard by the heat of the conflagration. >

Why Only Eleven? The detective naturally reasoned that if he could find the seller of the duck eggs he might learn more, and he set out on "a voyage of discovery" among the small shopkeepers in the district. Eventually he came upon a man who had sold some duck recently. Allmond had assumed that McKenzie might have bought a dozen esrgs. eaten one and stored the remainder in the can. But the storekeeper had sold his duck eggs not to McKenzie but to some other purchaser, and he had not sold a dozen luck egis but only 11—the very number found In the billy after the fire. Who then had bought the eggH and why had he taken only 11? The storekeeper eould answer those questions, too. He had sold the eggs to Tom and Denis Ryan., and they had taken only 11 because they had not enough money to pay for the full dozen.

Detective Allmond, now on firm ground, pressed his questions rapidly. He learned that the Ryans were quartercaste Chinese —"progeny of one of the hordes of Chinese goldminers who flocked to the Middle West gold diggings of last century." What were they like? The answer, as given in "Truth," ran graphically enough. They were "two ragged, "dirty, useless, uneducated loafers" and they were "lazy, quarrelsome, thievish, drunken wastrels." Thus enlightened, Allmond and his men swooped down upon the haunt of the Rvans.

At the first cast they captured the elder brother. Thomas, who is 30 years! old—his brother Denis is only 22—and questioned him. At first the man denied all knowledge of the murder. But a question about the 11 duck eggs found in the billy after the fire revealed his peril and the miserable wretch tried to secure safety for himself by admitting robbery and charging his brother with murder.

Both Sentenced To Die. I have given already the gruesome details of the crime as revealed in the two confessions —for Denis' agreed with Tom's in regard to all the important features of the murder, except that he, in turn, charged Tom with striking the fatal blow. In the end the jury found the evidence Convincing enough to justify a verdict of wilful murder against both of the ruffians, and so the Executive cam© face to face with the, problem which has since caused it so many hours of weary deliberation and discussion. There, was no doubt that the Ryans had robbed and murdered McKenzie, and there was no doubt that at least in the eves of the law they were equally guilty, but the doubt and hesitation of Ministers was due to the submitted them regarding the mentality of the two criminals. The Ryans, it seems, have been stupid and unmanageable from boyhood. They could learn nothing at school, and no one could teach or control them. So lacking were they in ordinary intelligence that they could hardly be regarded as fully responsible for their actions, and their long police records for drunkenness and thieving spoke eloquently of their low mentality and strongly developed criminal tendency. It was clearly open to Ministers to condemn the folly of allowing such dangerous creatures to roam the country side so long, and to pursue their reckless and evil course of life with comparative impunity, but it was still a question whether such' "anti-social sub-normals" —creatures both irresponsible and incorrigible—should be subjected to that extreme penalty of the law which is usually deserved for wilful and premeditated murder. At last Cabinet solved the difficulty and. divested itself of a heavy responsibility by deciding that the Ryans, though their lives are spared, shall be deprived for the rest of their days of the power to injure those around them.