84 CONVICTIONS FOR THEFT

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22271, 9 December 1937, Page 4

84 CONVICTIONS FOR THEFT

WOMAN SENTENCED AT DUNEDIN / " REFORMATIVE DETENTION FOR TWO YEARS (PBISB A3BOCU.TIO* TBLtOBAM.) DUNEDIN, December 8. Convicted on 12 charges that brought her total theft convictions to 84, Leonie Evelyn MacMahon, aged 34, whom the police described as a professional shoplifter, was sentenced to two years’ reformative detention by Mr J. R. Bartholomew, S.M. All the thefts, which in the aggregate represented goods worth £lO5, were committed in one week. Her counsel pleaded that her conduct was governed by abnormality for, in spite of earlier sentences, she could not resist the impulse to steal. Chief-Detective J. B. Young stated that some years ago accused held a good position, which she lost, since when she had apparently taken to shoplifting. She first appeared in Auckland on 22 charges in 1926. She was convicted at Christchurch on 42 charges in 1932; and again at Christchurch in 1935 on eight charges. The Magistrate, in passing sentence, said it was an extraordinarily tragic case of an educated, intelligent woman persisting In a career of crime. Her case would come before the Prisons Board, when any question of abnormality could be dealt with.