AFTER SEVEN YEARS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 68, 22 March 1933, Page 9

AFTER SEVEN YEARS

MAN BROUGHT TO JUSTICE

Disappearing in 1926 after he had cashed three valueless cheques, William Granville Haldane Stevens,, a designer, aged 52, succeeded in .eluding arrest until last month, when he was apprehended at Otaki.

Stevens appeared before Mr. E. Page, S.M., at the Magistrate's Court today and pleaded ' guilty to a charge of obtaining £7 10s by means of a valueless cheque and to three charges of stealing bicycles.

Detective-Sergeant Revell .said tliat in 1926 the accused lived at Thames. He borrowed a cheque form there and signed it with the name of a resident of that town. After cashing the cheque with a hotelkeeper he ■went to another town, where he did a similar thing with two other cheque forms. He then disappeared and it was not until last month that his identity was discovered. After the accused had been arrested at Otaki it was ascertained that he had stolen bicycles at Levin, Eoiver Hutt. and Wellington. "Die accused," concluded Mr. Revel!, "has quite a list of convictions for false pretences and forgery dating from 1911." The accused was sentenced to six months' imprisonment on the charge of ialho pretences, and to three mouths on 1 each of the other chnrjrcp, the lenus uu all charges to be concurrent. . ~>