MARRIAGE EVE KIDNAPPING

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 May 1931, Page 8

MARRIAGE EVE KIDNAPPING

J YOUNG MAN’S ADVENTURE, ; — i-n ’ Drugged, then kidnapper on his wed-* 1 ding eve, to wake bound and }to the skin by torrential tiSiii, in a ’ lonely spot in the bash, the extract- ’ ■ dlnary story of his adventures was ’ told by Mr John Cousins, aged 23, ot 1 Waverley, Sydney. intending to spend the evening with his fiancee. Mr Cousins, an experienced motor mechanic, was tearing his employer’s garage at Camperdown . about 6 p.m. on Friday, April 24, When two men blocked his path. “Evidently mistaking me for my employer—they must have been after his payroll,” Mr Cousins, in relating the" 1 story, “they said, ‘Gobdmight, Mac.’ Then they asked for a lift tb a street at Newtown and I told tttem get in the car. “As I Slowed down neat the street indicated one dt the men said to the other as I turned round, “That’s the new stuff?’ It was a bottle of what looked like hair oil. ‘Smell that, Mao,’ said the older man of the two. As I went to take the bottle from him a cloth was suddenly thrown round my face and pulled tightly by a hand on each side. “I felt a peculiar sensation as of being lifted into the air—and the next thing I knew was when I woke up in gome bush. My overcoat had been taken off and my wrists and ankles lashed together with strong tape. Fighting to regain my senses, I saw. in a dazed way that I was in the back of my car. "The rain was pouring down; it must hive been about 2 a.m. oh Saturday. I staggered for about 200 yarns and then returned to the car, eolldpoing on the running board. When I woke again my limbs had been untied and my overcoat had been placed over me.

“Cold, dazed, and aching all over, I struggled to the car, and, hardly knowing how i Was driving, found that I had got within about two imlhs cf Dapto. My nerves had gone, but I drove as fast as I could until I caihe to a garage and went in to riflfc up Juy people. About £2O had been taken from my coat, put luckily the thugs had missed hiy fob pocket.” Meanwhile, a glri and anxious parents had telephoned the hospitals. Just when Mr Cousins should have been sitting at the head Of a happy wedding breakfast party at a Cd'Ogee hotel he drove his car —somehow, he says—to'the front of , his Waverley home. He had to be carried inside. A doctor was Palled. The next day he Whad improved, but was still in Uh extremely nervous' state. The wedding Was postponed for a week.