MUSICAL KILLER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30711, 29 March 1965, Page 11

MUSICAL KILLER

(N Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SYDNEY, March 28. The kidnap-murderer, Stephen Leslie Bradley, won honours in the Australian Music Examination Board results this w eek. Bradley, serving life imprisonment for the murder of a schoolboy, Graeme Thorne, in 19611, plays a clarinet in Goulburn training centre’s 16piece concert orchestra. He is described as an “apt music pupil” who could one day take over leadership of the prison orchestra. Bradley won his honours in the A.M.E.B. third-grade practical test. Officials said that as Bradley had apparently had no

musical training before he was sent to gaol this was “good progress.” Grade 7 is the highest A.M.E.B. standard before the associated and licentiate examinations. Five Goulburn prisoners passed either practical or theory music examinations last year, three with honours. Goulburn training centre is a maximum security prison, and a big number of its 400 convicts are “lifers.” Most of the orchestra members are serving life terms: the orchestra leader himself is a public school-educated murderer, who has now reached the highest A.M.E.B. grade standard. The Comptroller-General of Prisons, Mr J. A. Morony, said orchestra members were trained by a Goulburn high school teacher and municipal bandmaster, Mr K. G. Wilson, who spent two hours a week with the prisoners.