£200 Of Stolen Payroll Located In Auckland

Press, Volume C, Issue 29467, 20 March 1961, Page 14

£200 Of Stolen Payroll Located In Auckland

(NJZ. Press Association} AUCKLAND, March 19. More than £2OO worth of £5 and £lO notes believed to be in the series taken in the £19,000 waterfront payroll robbery of 1956 have been located in the Auckland province.

The first of them began to appear in circulation soon after the escape from the Auckland prison on February 3 of Trevor Edward Nash, the man contacted of the theft. They have been recovered at several race meetings in the province, banks and grocery shops. One note was found at Whenuapai airport. But detectives following up the discovery have found no positive leads to the whereabouts of Nash or where the stolen payroll now is.

At the time of his escape Nash had served three years of his sentence of seven years imprisonment for the theft of the payroll from the Waterfront Industry Commission office on November 28, 1956. Nash was arrested about a year after the offence was committed but only a small amount of the money was accounted for. Today Detective Inspector W. S. Craigie said no more of the notes had been recovered in the last two weeks. He agreed this could mean that if the money had been circulated by Nash he had now left the Auckland province after staying in hiding in the area. On Friday a £lO note believed to be one of the stolen series was handed in to the Bank of New Zealand in Lyttelton. Mr Craigie said that tracing back the persons who had passed the notes had proved very difficult. In one case a note recognised by a bank clerk ,was traced back through eight different per-

sons to another bank where the trail ended. Questioned about the possibilities of an effort being made to get rid of the money in Australia, Mr Craigie said it was doubtful that a large amount could be disposed of there without it coming to the notice of the Australian police. Mr Craigie agreed with a comment of the Commissioner of Police (Mr W. S. Brown) that the money might have been in circulation before Nash's escape, but had been picked up as a result of the publicity given the escape. However, Mr Brown said: “I imagine that he is paying to be free. You can’t live long in New Zealand and lie low like that without paying for it.” Mr Brown said the actual numbers of notes were not recorded, only the series. Mr Brown and Mr Craigie paid tribute to the skill and powers of observation of the bank staffs and other people who had picked up the money from among the large amounts they handle daily.