MISSING NAVAL IOFFICER

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 85, 9 April 1924, Page 5

MISSING NAVAL IOFFICER

CAUGHT WHEN APPARENTLY DERANGED.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION. COI'IEIGHT.) (AUSTRALIAS-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCLIITON.) (Received 9th April, 11.30 a.m.) SAN FRANCISCO, 7th April. Lieutenant Ervine Brown, an assistant paymaster attached to the destroyer division of the Battle Fleet, who absconded with 120,000 dollars of naval funds, has been captured by the police, who found him apparently deranged and lying on the roadway to the park. A physician "declared that he was only feigning insanity. The police found 1200 dollars in his clothing. . They later placed him under observation, because he was acting violently and irrationally.

Lieutenant Brown left his ship on 12th March, and was subsequently absent without leave, which circumstance gave rise to suspicion, and it-was found that his accounts were 120,000 dollars short. Two or three days later his wife returned 76,000 dollars of the missing .money, and declared that she. met her husband after the robbery and had pleaded* with him to surrender himself. When he refused to do so, she secretly took the satchel containing the money and returned it to the authorities.