Kidnapper Of Girl Shot Dead By Police

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 1

Kidnapper Of Girl Shot Dead By Police

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 16. Police tonight shot and killed 22-year-old Bruce John Glensore, kidnapper of a teen-age girl after a two-hour siege of a suburban Northland house by the armed offenders squad. The girl, Miss Julie Campbell, is alive and well.

Police said Glensore was shot outside the house by a member of the armed offenders squad.

They said they were tipped off by Glensore’s father-in-law that Glensore was in the house, in Garden Road. They also received an indirect tip to the same effect from another person in the house. Road-blocks were set up at both ends of Garden Road. An ambulance’was called. Three car-loads of armed police reinforcements arrived at the scene. All traffic in the immediate vicinity was stopped. An armed offenders squad spokesman said after the shooting that Glensore left the house with two hostages —one of them Miss Campbell —in front of his shotgun and

. pistol and ran down the steep, winding street. “Glensore threatened to shoot to kill and said he wanted to die,” the spokesman said. When Glensore reached well-lit Glenmore Street he met an armed constable and threatened him with one of his guns. The constable asked Glensore to put his guns down. The spokesman said a rifle was fired further up Garden Road and Glensore fell fatally wounded beneath pohutukawa trees at the side of the road. Glensore died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

Police announced later that the shot was fired by a member of Detective Inspector F. Parker’s Palmerston North armed offenders squad. Miss Campbell was taken to the Central Police Station, where she was reunited with her parents. Police had earlier warned the public that Glensore was dangerous and that they feared for the life of Miss Campbell, whom he abddcted at gunpoint last night Before the shooting in Garden Road, Glensore had last been sighted last night, when he held up a police car. After blasting a hole through the dashboard with his shotgun he ordered the three police-

men inside to get out and took a pistol from one of them. The kidnapped girl's father Mr A. Campbell, appealed to the wanted man over a local radio station for her safe return, and told him that she needed to be kept warm in addition to needing certain pills. Mr Campbell said his daughter had been ill. During the day police combed Karori and the outer suburb of 'Makara and called in a helicopter to search exposed countryside for Glensore, who was also wanted in connection with the theft of firearms from a city sports shop. All buses and cars leaving the two districts were stopped and searched by police. Mr Campbell said Glensore, who was known to his family, was married and had a child. He said Glensore knocked on the door of their Fernlea Street house last night “and said he wanted Julie.” "When he pointed his gun at me Julie said she would go with him,” Mr Campbell said. “She was crying.” Mr Campbell and his weeping wife watched helplessly as Glensore took their daughter away, but the girl’s father said today, “He rang us this morning \ and said Julie was quite safe and that he would look after her. “He let us speak to Julie and she said she was all right,” Mr Campbell said. There was no other contact.

Detective Chief Superintendent R. Walton told a press conference before the fatal shooting that Glensore was certainly dangerous and that if he was discovered he should on no account be tackled by any member of the public. Police told reporters today that when Glensore, with his girl hostage behind him, held up the police car last night he told the three men that if they did not get out he would shoot them.

“I am a desperate man," Glensore said. To one policeman, who was slow in getting out of the car, he said: “If

I don’t get that fellow out I will shoot” Glensore told one of the policemen to drop the .38 pistol he was carrying. He took the gun and the girl away as the policemen dived for cover.