"NOT GUILTY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1937, Page 16

"NOT GUILTY."

VERDICT CHEERED. MAN ON MURDER CHARGE. SYDNEY GANGSTER SHOT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 17. Late in the evening of October 150 Detective-Constable Hughes received a call from the (linger .Tar Cabaret, a well-known dancing resort in Her Majesty's Arcade. The message was brief and to the point—"Gunmen here; you're wanted" —mid Hughes went at once. He found—as he told the citycoroner later—an "argument" going on between the man whom he and most of the police knew as Clarrie Thomas and Gerald Reilly, who is a brother of Richard Reilly, floor manager of the cafe. It was Gerald Reilly's business to keep order there, and if necessary to act as "chucker out" —a duty that he is well able to perform. I may mention that the three Reilly brothers—the third is a policeman—are all powerfully built men, accustomed to boxing and wrestling, and well able to look after themselves under most circumstances. Clarrie Thomas and his friends, however, stood for quite exceptional circumstances in Detective Hughes' eyes, and he paid careful attention to the matter in hand. He found on inquiry that Thomas, with two other men and three women, had "barged" into the restaurant. One of the men was without collar or tie. and by the rules of the cafe he could not enter in that primitive garb. Thomas tried to intimidate Gerald Reilly, and warned him. "We'll clean you up," when the door was barred against them.

"I'll Get You Later." Hughes heard Thomas offer Richard Reilly to "take on" himself and his brother, and when Richard Reilly told him that he would get Thomas, arrested if he persisted in using threats Thomas answered, "I'll get you later, Dick." The Reillys, however, told Detective Hughes that they would not charge Thomas— they only wanted him to keep away from their cabaret- So closed the first episode in this tragic story. The second episode is dated November 18. Gerald Reilly was in the Surrey Hotel, at the corner of King and Castlereagh Streets, when Thomas came in, accompanied by another man, well known to the police. The two men asked Reilly to step outside, and once there speedily made their intentions plain. One of the men told Reilly that he and his companion were "going on" with him and his brother, because they had called the police to interfere—a heinous offence in the underworld. Thomas commented, "That is right," and to emphasise his meaning struck Reilly in the face. At the same time the other man hit Reilly a severe blow on the head with some heavy weapon; and the victim, looking up from the gTound half dazed, saw his two assailants standing over him with their hands plunged sug'gestivelv in their pockets.

According to Reilly's story to the coroner, Thomas said. "We'll give it to him now, Jack"—hut the other man, more cautious, replied, "He has had enough now—we'll give it to him and his brother later." Heard a Shot. As soon as Gabriel Reilly had pulled himself together, he went down to the Ginger Jar and told his brother Richard what had happened. Richard suggested that they should appeal to the police, and they were walking along Castlereagh Street towards Central Police Station when a taxi drove up and Thomas jumped out. According to the story told by the two Reillys, Thomas struck Gerald on the face. As Gerald fell he saw Thomas put his hand to his pocket, heard his brother Richard call "Look out, Gerry, he has a gun, v and then heard a shot. He then saw Thomas lying on the ground and saw his brother hand over a revolver and surrender himself to the police as described by me in an earlier account of the tragedy.

At the inquest the Reillye told the story that I have recounted above with a few minor variations. Richard Reillv's counsel laid great stress on the respectable character and the good record of the Reillys, and maintained that Richard Reilly had fired the fatal shot "in defence of his own life and that of his brother, intending to wound and not to inflict a deadly injury." It was the coroner's duty eimply to decide how Clarrie Thomas came by his end, and Richard Reilly's confession made his task easy. He found that Thomas had been murdered, and committed Reilly for trial at the present sitting of the Central Criminal Court. Charge. Against Police. The trial came on yesterday, and the evidence followed closely the lines taken at the inquest. As the case stood, Reilly seemed to have every chance of exoneration, but there were two facts that counted against him. One was I that the R3V. Albert Morris, the clergy- . man who had helped Thomas to fret 'remission of his last sentence, and who

believed sincerely in liim. insisted that both Thomas and his friend had been trying to "go straight" and that the police had "hounded him down" by enforcing the (Ymsorting Act unfairly against them. Mr. Morris had gone so far as to appear in Court and appeal 011 behalf of the other man who had been sentenced for consorting and now faces a second trial for assaulting Reilly.

The police insisted that Thomas was a "bad" man always, that the "reformation" which lie had professed to Mr. Morris was sheer hypocrisy, and that he had "double crossed" the clergyman all along. Possibly Mr. Morris wait, even against his will, persuaded by the revelations at the ini|iiest that he had been deceived, for he did not appear at Heilly's trial. The other factor which might have proved inimical to Kichard Reilly was the evidence of one William Dick, a bystander near the corner of Park «iul Castlereagh Streets on that tragic afternoon. He professed to have seen Thomas violently assaulted, beaten and kicked by a man whom lie identified as Gerald Keilly, before the shot was tired. Verdict Cheered. The Crown Prosecutor himself, however, refused to take Dick's evidence seriously, and expressed some doubt as to whether he had been at the scene of the crime. Judge Owen in summing up appeared to share these views, and the jurors certainly did not allow Dick's testimony to affect their judgment. After a retirement of 20 minutes they returned a verdict of "not guilty," and Reilly was acquitted amid loud applause from a large nunvber of his friends who were present in Court. Most people apparently believe with Reilly's counsel that Thomas was ''a jungle beast in human form," and his 10 convictions since 1917—for all kinds and species of violent crime—speak for themselves. One may be permitted to wonder, however, if there was anything at the basis of the faith in Thomas so ofen expressed and in strongly emotional terms by Mr. Thomas, or to the loyalty of the wife who had wedded him at the gaol door for such a honeymoon as this.