MAXIMUM TERM

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 281, 27 November 1941, Page 5

MAXIMUM TERM

YOUNG MAN'S CRIME I DEATH SENTENCE APPEAL SYDNEY, November 25. I Fourteen years, the maximum 'sentence, was passed by Judge jMarkell upon John Williams (31). 'truck driver, who was found guilty |of having assaulted Rhea Veronica I Clancy. 24. with intent to commit 'rape. Miss Clancy, who is a shopgirl iin Sydney, was travelling by train to her home at Kempsey when Williams 'entered her carriage and I assaulted her. She struggled and (screamed and finally escaped to a ( toilet where she hammered on the I walls till passengers in the next ! compartment heard her and pulled j the emergency cord, stopping the j train. Williams was found in the bush near Hawkesburv next day. Williams, from the dock, said the girl smiled at him when he spoke to her. and he kissed her. Later she seemed to become frightened and he pushed her on to the seat. He put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming. The judge was given Williams' criminal record, beginning in 1926. In 1929 Williams had been sentenced j to 18 months for a similar offence. In December. 1938. he escaped from i Parramatta gaol and was at large for i six weeks. The judge described him as a menace to every decent mar and woman in the community, j At Emmaville, Darrell Raymonc (Myers (27), hotel groom, has beer j charged with intent to murder fiv< I people, including his wife, by giv ling them arsenic in tea and a cake I The othe- four people concerned ar< I said to be his wife's parents, grand >ifather and unrle. It is alleged tha

I I Myers, who lives apart from his wife' I but sees her regularly, went to her I relatives' home, having obtained arsenic from a tin which the police! found in a room adjoining his at the| ' hotel where he lives. He is alleged 1 to have told the police that he gotl some water from the tank at hisj I relatives' place for the tea, and thatj |he added flour to the cake his wife; jwas making because she had put tooi i much water in The police projduced evidence that arsenic had been ■J found in the utensils used by I Myers, in the cake, and the tank, jand in cakes recovered from an old 1 shaft near the house. '! The Full Court dismissed the .appeal against his death sentence by '■\\ illiam Fisher, 65, painter, the man ' who strangled Jeanette Walsh, aged !three, whose body was found in jMoore Park on August 10. Fisher ' claimed among other things that he ■ had been prejudiced because his trial had finished on a Saturday before a holiday week-end, when the jury was likely to be concerned !|about being locked up for a long period, and because his trial had proceeded pending proceedings against certain newspapers for contempt: !,also that a detective had committed . perjury. The Chief Justice (Sir Fred , lerick Jordan) admitted there were ■weaknesses in the Crown's case, bw [ :said the evidence warranted the con eviction. As there is a Labour Govern pent in this State Fisher will not bt .hanged. ! Another prominent Court case ir • Sydney was again before the publi< 1 last week, when Theodore Cnarle . Trautwein, 73, bankrupt ex-M.L.C and hotel owner, was sentenced b] Mr. Justice Lukin in the Bankruptcy fj Court to gaol until further orde* i for contempt. The judge held tha •j,Trautwein had been guilty of eva Ision and prevarication during- long drawn-out examination of his affair d|by the Official Receiver. He re n jmarked that Trautwein was not ai ordinary bankrupt for his receipt e had been about £40,000 a year. Traui r-iwein was made bankrupt ii e. September, 1940, by the Taxation .J Commissioner, who then claimed ai indebtedness of £324.000. An appea 1 ion 21 grounds has been lodge< itlagainst Mr. Justice Lukin's sentence