Wide Sympathy For Biggs

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32127, 24 October 1969, Page 11

Wide Sympathy For Biggs

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

MELBOURNE, October 23. Victorian police—battling against widespread public sympathy for the train robber, Ronald Biggs—declared today that they had “pulled out all stops” to capture the fugitive.

All available police reserves were thrown into the manhunt, and detectives checked out dozens of reports that the 40-year-61d British robber had been spotted, but to no avail. Biggs, last of the 1963 train hold-up gang still free, has I been on the run for nearly a [week since breaking cover as a respectable suburban family man and fleeing only hours before police raided his home and detained his wife last Friday. While detectives renewed their appeal for public help in Australia’s most intensive manhunt, a television company street poll revealed that three out of four of hundreds of Australians interviewed would help Biggs rather than turn him in. But Chief Superintendent James Milner, in charge of the hunt, said: “Remember that he was a member of a vicious gang, that he is a ; criminal and nothing more.” Biggs, who served only 14; months of a 30-year sentence; for-his part in the robbery before escaping from London’s Wandsworth gaol four years ago, dodged Australianl police again last Saturday. Superintendent Milner, re-; ferring to suitcases of labelled clothes Biggs left be-1 hind in his hurried departure I from a motel in suburban!

■ Essendon, said: “He is a : stupid and desperate man . . . ; not the criminal mastermind ■ he was thought to be. I “I would have thought he ; was much better than he is. But he left evidence behind.” He added: “Now he is ; rattled. 1 think we have got him boxed in. We have got J every hole round Melbourne 'plugged. This city is shut up ' tight. “It is just a matter of time I before someone spots him . . . he can’t get very far." A former Scotland Yard inspector, Mr Ronald Muggeridge, aged 51, who worked on the train robbery case, lived with friends for a week opposite Biggs home in the Melbourne suburb of Blackburn in May this year without discovering the identity of his neighbour. Biggs was believed to be a heavy gambler and police say that he may have lost most of his cut from tbe robbery at horse races. Police! have said they will not be; looking for a shooting match after anonymous calls to radio stations and a news-! paper saying that Biggs was !not armed. Superintendent Milner said: “No doubt our men will be : carrying a gun under the atm; |. . . but the furthest, thing ifrom our tnind is starting! I shooting." I