WAREHOUSE BURGLED

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 28, 2 August 1933, Page 13

WAREHOUSE BURGLED

FINGERPRINTS AS EVIDENCE

MAN REMANDED FOR SENTENCE

■ (By Telegraph.—Presa Association.) AUCKLAND, August 1. A verdict of guilty was returned by the jury in the Supremo Court'when Leonard Otto Hardy was charged with breaking and entering the warehouso of Tylers, Limited, with intent to commit a crime. On a second charge of wilfully placing explosives in the warehouse with intent to damage the safe, the accused was found not guilty. Mr. V. N. Hubble, for the Crown, said that the evidenco would be almost entirely that of fingerprints found on the window by which someone had entered the building on Juno 21. The accused was in Mount Eden prison in connection with another matter,* and his fingerprints were then taken. Tyler's warehouse had been entered a month earlier, and . fingerprints had been obtained on pieces of glass. When the accused's fingerprints were sent f roni the prison they were found to tally with those on the glass; Senior-Sergeant Dinnie, fingerprint expert in charge of the criminal registration branch, in Wellington, said that fingerprints had been used, in criminal investigations',in New Zealand since 1903, and over 50,000 people had been fingerprinted. All fingerprints were classified, and never in his experience liaS twO fingerprints been found alike, either iii New Zealand or anywhere else in the world. Mf. justice Sjititith said thai tljero could bis ntt flciuot that the1 fingerprints found on ,thq window were those of the accused. It would be an extraordinary thing foV the jury to' discard the evidence of experts.* The chances against error were billions .to one, and there were only i,500*,000 people iii New Zealand. '* ■ The accused was remanded for sentence.