Decision on M.P. in 10 days

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33875, 21 June 1975, Page 15

Decision on M.P. in 10 days

(N'cw Zealand Press Association) .MELBOURNE, June 20. Melbourne's Chief Stipendiary .Magistrate (Mr Cyril Thompson) announced today that he would decide in 10 days whether the runaway British Labour member of Parliament John Stonehouse, and his secretary. Sheila Buckley, should be extradited to Britain.

The Magistrate reserved his ruling after completion of evidence and lawyers’ arguments in the case, which began three months ago. | Mr Thompson, who had ! spent the last five days I listening to evidence from I witnesses, and to legal sub- ■ missions, said that he would I require a 10-day adjournment to enable him to read the thousands pf words of I testimony given on the j charges against the former British Government Minister and Buckley. Stonehouse, who arranged I his own disappearance from I Miami Beach, Florida, last I November, is accused in 21 : charges of theft, fraud, forglery, and conspiracy in- ! voicing nearly £170,000. I Buckley is accused on five theft charges and on one alI leging conspiracy. The prosecution’s case is i that Stonehouse and Buckley I conspired together on a ! detailed plan for the M.P. to I disappear and re-emerge in ! Australia in another guise ! after he had become entangled in political and business problems. Stonehouse is alleged to have transferred thousands of pounds from British, Swiss, and American banks to accounts he opened in Melbourne in the names of two dead men. Outlining the alleged plan for Stonehouse to disappear, . prosecuting counsel (Mr Frederick James) said yesterday that intercepted letters sent by Buckley to Stonehouse in Melbourne shortly after he disappeared , from Miami Beach, Florida, showed “a relationship which can only support the inference of conspiratorial dealing.” Prosecuting counsel said ! there was evidence in deposI itions taken from more than

60 witnesses in London that Stonehouse, in the guise of a dead man called Joseph Arthur Markham, was making plans to emigrate to Australia in July, 1974, “long before the urge to swim and be drowned at Miami overtook him." A few weeks after vanishing in the United States, Mr James said. Stonehouse contacted his secretary, and noone else, in England, and three weeks after he had disappeared he was “seeking to deposit sAust22,soo in Melbourne banks in notes of large denomination.” He had transferred £14,000 from the London branch of the Bank of New South Wales to the bank’s Melbourne branch in the name of Markham, counsel alleged. The forgery charges against Stonehouse involve the obtaining of birth certificates in the names of Markham and Donald Clive Mildoon, both of whom were dead. Stonehouse entered Australia on a passport bearing the name of Markham. Mr James also alleged that Stonehouse had taken out life insurance policies shortly before his disappearance, with intent -to defraud. Mr James rebutted defence submissions that Buckley, once a director of the Stonehouse company who signed cheques on his loan account, had acted entirely innocently and was not involved in any fashion with Stonehouse’s decision to disappear. Counsel said that Buckley was interviewed on December 23 by a senior Scotland Yard woman police officer at Highfield House Hotel, Fitzjohn's Avenue, London, and had admitted hearing from Stonehouse soon after his disappearance.