AFTER TEN MONTHS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 70, 15 December 1932, Page 11

AFTER TEN MONTHS

Prisoner’s Liberty Ends BENNETT RECAPTURED Escape from Hautu Camp — I I By Telegraph.-—Press Association. To Kuiti, Dec. 14As a result of information received the Te Kuiti police arrested Charles Bennett, who has successfully eluded the police- since his escape from the Hautu prison camp with Roy Morris, nearly ten months ago. Morris has already been recaptured. Bennett was caught by the police on the New Plymouth road between Te Kuiti and Piopio this morning. Bennett had left in a car driven by a commercial traveller, and from information received two constables went out and arrested Bennett in a house where he and the traveller had stopped. Bennett submitted quietly. He appeared before justices of the peace at the Te Kuiti Court to-day, and was charged with escaping from legal custody on February 20. He was remanded to appear at Hamilton on December 21. AUCKLAND ESCAPEES All Recaptured but One Dominion Special Service. --Auckland, Dec. 14. With tbe recapture on Sunday of Frederick William Schluter, tbe prisoner who escaped from Mr. Eden Gaol on April 29, and the recapture to-day of Charles Bennett, only one criminal who has escaped from custody in the Auckland province this year has not been recaptured. Several men have made a bid for liberty during the past 12 months, some from Mt. Eden Prison, some from the Auckland Hospital, and some from the country prison camps, but with these two exceptions all have been recaptured after varying periods at large. Last month two young men, Arthur Albert Clayton, aged 20, and Graham Wilfred Morton, aged 21, escaped from the Borstal institution at Waikeria. They were recaptured at Taneatua. in tbe Bay of Plenty, three days after their escape. The last attempt to escape from Mt, Eden was in August, when a prisoner. R. Venables, made au unsuccessful dash for liberty from the stone quarry. As he was climbing a wire fence at the edge of the prison reserve a shot was fired by a warder to warn him that be had been seen, and he submitted quietly to recapture. Earlier in the year two men. Albert Williams, aged 26, and Maurice Edward Wiston, aged 19, escaped from tbe Waikeria Borstal farm while most of the other prisoners were engaged in outdoor sports. They were recaptured by warders on Mount Pirongia, which is a short distance away, two days later, surrendering without resistance. Charles Bennett, aged 26, who was recaptured to-day, escaped with another man, Edgar William Allen, from the Hautu Prison Camp on February,, 21. The pair broke from their cells earlv in the morning and stole a motorcar/in which they travelled a long distance. By removing further cars and abandoning them the two men evaded tbe police for two weeks, travelling over a wide area. Allen was recaptured near Waverley, but Bennett escaped into tbe scrub. A short time previously a prisoner who was undergoing treatment at the Auckland Hospital, Roy George Cudby. aged 29, who had previously escaped from the Wellington Hospital, and remained at liberty for two years, evaded the warder who was guarding him, and made his escape from the Wallace ward. He was recaptured two days later. Similar circumstances attended the escape of Thomas William Wilson, aged 26, who was servng a five-years’ term in Mt. Eden Prison for a series of crimes in Dunedin, including a visious attack on an aged pawnbroker and n’rs wife. He also escaped from the Auckland Hospital last December, and efforts to trace him since have met with no success. It is believed by tbe police that he left New Zealand for Australia,: where he was born, and had many friends. '