CONVERTED TWENTY CARS

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24094, 2 November 1943, Page 7

CONVERTED TWENTY CARS

YOUTH SENT TO BORSTAL FOR THREE YEARS

(P.A.) AUCKLAND. November 1. A motor driver, Paul Roger Devenish. aged 19,-pleaded guilty in the Magistrate’s Court to-day to 20 charges of unlawfully converting to his own use between October 8 and 25 20 motor-cars of a total value of £6530. An unusual feature of the case was that the youth, on numerous occasions, used the converted cars to ply for business as a taxi driver, and he twice hired cars taken to servicemen. His escapades came to an end at 1.30 a.m. on October 26, when a constable arrested him in one of the converted cars, in company with two servicemen. Devenish, who was on licence from a Borstal Institution, was sent back to that institution for a maximum period of three years. Mr Dickson, his counsel, said Devenish was abandoned by his parents in South Africa as an infant, and was brought to New Zealand by his nurse, who ever since had been a real mother to him. He was well educated, but had a definite mental kink in regard to motor-cars. Mr J. H. Luxford, S.M., told Devenish that he appeared to have set out on a rampage of taking motor-cars. He might have a kink for things mechanical, but he had shown much cunning. In sending him to Borstal, the Magistrate said that whep he made up his mind that crime did not pay, things might go well for him.