POLICE RAID ON HOUSE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27302, 19 March 1954, Page 12

POLICE RAID ON HOUSE

THREE MEN CHARGED WITH THEFT

EVIDENCE OF RECOVERY OF STOLEN SAFE (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, March 18. A detective described in the Auckland' Magistrate’s Court today how police surrounded a house m Freeman’s Bay apd found a stolen safe in the kitchen with its top chopped out and contents scattered about. Three men pleaded not guilty to breaking and entering and theft from Ross and Glendining, Ltd., and were committed by Mr M. C. Astley, S.M., to the Supreme Court for trial. They were Owen James McGoon, Edward Walters, both labourers, and Victor John Saunders, a seaman. . , , Detective B. J. C. Nicholson said that he went with seven other officers to 14 Sale street on the night of March 4 and! surrounded the hojise. He knocked on the back door, and McGoon opened it. He found Saunders behind the door, a damaged safe in the kitchen, and an axe. Under Saunders’s feet was sawdust, two money bags, and records which had come from the safe. In a bedroom adjoining the kitchen Waltzs was found lyifig, fully dressed, on n bed. From the bedclothes, said the witness, he recovered £39 10s in notes. Other money was found lying in the kitchen, making a total of £4l 13s.

Constable H. H. F. Lisette said he examined the safe for fingerprints, but there were none. There'were definite indications that the safe had been wined over. Gordon Walter*Stace, Assistant Government Analyst, said he had compared sawdust from the safe with saw--dust found on property taken from the three accused. It was similar. Elba Dawn Wilson, general clerk at Ross and Glendining, Ltd., said she had left the safe locked on March 4 with about £B4 3s in notes, silver, and pennies in it