SUPREME COURT Man Charged With Theft Of Copper Wire

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31740, 25 July 1968, Page 7

SUPREME COURT Man Charged With Theft Of Copper Wire

A man standing Supreme Court trial yesterday on a charge of theft, or, alternatively, of receiving, Edward James George Ure, aged 40, a painter, was said to have been one of a group of six men seen in the Waimakariri riverbed on February 26 with a car and 16 coils of copper wire—the latter identified to the jury as being worth $2896 and stolen from Associated British Cables the day before. Ure (Mr J. M. Wilson), in pleading not guilty, gave evidence himself that although he knew and had stayed at the same boarding-house as some of the men seen in the riverbed, he had not been there with them that day.

But he admitted that he had absconded from bail when charged with theft, with these men. His trial, before Mr Justice Wilson, will continue today, when counsel will address the jury and his Honour sum up. A Clarkville farmer, Herbert James Barnard, who had been going round his sheep in the riverbed about 8.30 a.m. on February 26, gave evidence of how he had come upon a 1938 Chevrolet car with coils of copper wire on the ground beside it Constable’s Evidence Constable I. E. Harris, of Kaiapoi, who arrived on the scene about 9 a.m., said that he saw six men beside the car and wire—one of whom he knew as a man named Allingham. When he called out to the six men, three walked away into the willows while the other three —one of whom he thought he recognised as Ure, from having seen his photograph in the Police Gazette a few weeks previously—walked towards him. Of these three, Ure and another man got into the front seat of a second car parked nearby, and in spite of witness’s attempt to get its ignition key, drove off. But the third man, named Barrett, Constable Harris said he grabbed, “because he was the smallest.”

"One was all I could manage,” Constable Harris said. Mr Barnard, in his evidence, said he had previously seen a group of men burning wire in the riverbed—at the same spot, known as Barnard’s Ramp—at various intervals before February. He said he recognised the accused, Ure, as having been one of those men. Constable Harris said that Ure had been no further than 6ft to Bft from him when getting into the second car. Under cross-examination by Mr Wilson, Constable Harris agreed that he had been mistaken in the past over identification, but “very seldom.” This time, however, it was not possible he was mistaken —and he had been further able to identify Ure, in the sense of “putting a name to him,” from photographs witness had seen at the Central Police Station. “Not Very Handsome”

He was positive, Constable Harris said, that Ure was one of the six men he had seen at Barnard’s Ramp. Mr Wilson: What is so distinctive about Mr Ure that makes you so certain? Constable Harris: Well, I don't thing he’s very handsome —put it that way. Would you not require more than that to make you certain of his identification? —No. He’s rather distinctive, I would say. Detective T. J. Gorman said that when detectives went to Barnard’s Ramp on February 26 they found the back seat missing from the Chevrolet car—but this seat was later found on the back veranda of a Hereford Street address where the accused was then living. Under cross-examination, Detective Gorman agreed that the men Allingham and Barrett—both of whom had been living there, and whose whereabouts were at present unknown —could have put the seat there. Constable R. D. Cumming gave evidence of Ure’s apprehension, with a man Allingham, on February 27, after a car the police had been watching for had been chased at high speed, for 18 miles, on back roads behind Burnham and Rolleston, and eventually stopped. Allingham and Ure, said Constable Cumming, were found by police dogs hiding in a clump of gorse in a paddock alongside the Burnham-Aylesbury Road. Accused’* Evidence

Ure, in his evidence, said that Allingham had invited him to go with a party to a riverbed on the morning of February 26, “to fix a car that had broken down,” but he (accused) had declined, and had spent the morning at

various hotels in Christchurch, later meeting Allingham (who had said he was “in a spot of bother”) at the Eastern Hotel that evening, and spending the night with him at a third man’s place. This, said Ure, was after be had learned from a Mr Lance Murdoch, at the Hereford Street boarding-house where he had been staying, that the police had been inquiring for him there, and he had guessed that it was to execute a warrant for imprisonment for arrears of maintenance. “I didn’t bother to go back,” Ure said. Because of this, said Ure, he had accepted an invitation from Allingham the next morning to go on a trip to Dunedin—during which the police arrested them. Taxed in cross-examination by the Crown Prosecutor (Mr N. W. Williamson) that he had been seen at Barnard’s Ramp, in the Waimakariri riverbed, with Allingham and others on the morning of February 26, Ure said: “I wouldn’t even know where Barnard’s Ramp is.” Mr Barnard, the farmer who had said he had seen the accused there several times before, “must have been mistaken.” Mr Williamson: what about Constable Harris? He said he saw you there on February 26, only 6ft to Bft away? Accused: Constable Harris must be mistaking me for somebody else. Failure To Appear Mr Williamson later asked if accused had not been at Barnard’s Ramp on the morning of February 26, why he had failed to appear at the Magistrate’s Court to answer to the charge of theft of the wire, on May 19. Ure gave a long reply, saying that there had been “a discussion" between those charged over the copper wire, and that because it was said that bail would be stopped on the taking of depositions, and they could not be tried in the Supreme Court until the July session, “it was suggested that none of them appear.” Challenged that this answer did not really explain why he had failed to appear, Ure said, in the course of another long reply, that he had still had his freedom in that the warrant for his arrears of maintenance had not then been executed, and he was “more or less led with the rest in not fronting up.” Ure agreed that he had been arrested in Tauranga, living under the name of Frank Chilton.

Lance Murdoch, a war pensioner, who said he owned a property at 292 Hereford Street where Ure had resided, gave defence evidence that the latter had been there on the morning of February 26 —and denied, in crossexamination, that he had told the police (when they had inquired there late that afternoon) that Ure had gone away with Allingham and others about 7.30 that morning. The trial was then adjourned until today.