ESCAPE PLAN FALLS

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 July 1946, Page 3

ESCAPE PLAN FALLS

CRIMINALS HIDE IN BAGS

SYDNEY, July 27. Two criminals who smuggled themselves out of the Long Bay gaol in bags were on the point of suffocation when soldiers found them in a military truck at the Moorebank camp about 20 miles away. A truck-driver heard the men calling for help after they had lain under several hundredweight of bags for an hour. The convicts are William Henry Finch, aged 24, who was serving a 10-year gaol sentence for assault and robbery on an old woman, and Angus Haddow, aged 22, a sailor, who was serving a six years’ gaol term on two charges of assault and robbery. At the gaol the men were repairing military equipment, which military lorries brought and took away. They hid in hessian paliasses and Finch took with him a knife to cut himself free. The hessian bags were filled with military haversacks, belts, and other equipment and s<?wn up later. Other prisoners lifted the bags on to a military truck which was returning to the Moorebank camp. The bags containing Finch and Haddow were the first to be lifted on to the lorry, and other bags were piled on them. The escape plan failed when the rn cu were almost suffocated by the great pile of bags on top of them. The driver, upon hearing their cries, cahed for assistance and soldiers unloaded the truck, released the criminals,. and held them until the police arrived.