Woman Gaoled For Mail Thefts

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30940, 22 December 1965, Page 3

Woman Gaoled For Mail Thefts

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, December 21. More than 1100 unopened letters, 1200 circulars, and 330 opened letters and parcels were found during a search of a woman’s fiat in Ashburton, Senior-Sergeant R. Joyce told the Magistrate’s Court, Auckland, today. Among the ashes in an incinerator at the rear of the flat were the partly-burned fragments of other letters. Elaine Brown, aged 29, an unemployed nurse-aid, admitted one charge each of stealing, secreting and destroying mail, five charges of false pretences and one charge of stealing a credit card. She also appeared for sentence on two charges of obtaining credit by fraud and one each of burglary and conversion of a rental car. to

which she pleaded guilty last week. Mr J. R. Drummond sentenced her to a year's gaol. Senior-Sergeant Joyce said Brown had been employed t>y the Ashburton post office to deliver mail. When officials started inquiries into complaints about non-delivery of mail, she left. She used a credit card found in one of the letters she kept to obtain £42 16s 9d worth of goods on account, he said For Brown, Mr M. E. Bowen said she had found she was taking too long to cover her 14-mile country road postal round, for which she was provided with a cycle, and started putting mail aside. ‘This was a deliberate series of offences, committed over a period of time,” said the Magistrate. “She has already been convicted of dishonesty.”