18 MONTHS’ GAOL AFTER HOLD-UP BID

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 23

18 MONTHS’ GAOL AFTER HOLD-UP BID

(New Zealand Press Association)

DUNEDIN, June 17. The staff of these hospitals had the right to go about their work unmolested and the punishment imposed in this case must deter others thinking of committing this sort of offence, Mr J. D. Murray, S.M., said in imposing prison terms of 18 months on two youths who appeared for sentences on charges resulting from an attempted hold-up at St Luke’s Hospital on May 9. Fredric John Moreland, aged 22, a workman, and Colin Graham Helson, aged 20, unemployed, pleaded guilty to charges of robbery. Mr J. Conradson represented them both.

The third person involved in the hold-up, Linda Fay Whittaker, aged 17, a nurse aide employed at St. Luke’s, had also pleaded guilty to the robbery charge, but on obtaining the legal advice of Mr M. J. Knuckey, asked leave to reverse this plea to not guilty. This was granted and she was remanded for one week. Bail was fixed at £lOO with one surety of £lOO, with the condition that she report daily to the C. 1.8. office. According to the probation officer Kelson regarded this

whole incident as a “grotesque joke,” Mr Conradson said in submissions. In fact, it had received undue publicity from press, radio and television. The robbery allegedly arose from Whittaker’s desire to get something back on the matron with whom she had been arguing earlier in the day, and without Whittaker, who showed the youths the safe, what was in it and how best to get into it, the offence would not have been possible, he said. The incident was considerably more than the “joke” Kelson described, the Magistrate said sentencing the two. The most serious aspect was the binding and gagging of the matron, and although no money was in fact stolen, Kelson, who already had two convictions for assault, was interrupted in taking it