NOTORIOUS CHRISTIE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 November 1924, Page 5

NOTORIOUS CHRISTIE.

* SKETCH OF HIS CAREER

“NOBODY WANTS HIM.”

DUNEDIN, Nov. 11. “Nobody wants him,” is how an Australian writer introduced his sketch of the career of Joseph Thomas Christie, whose death as the result of at-* tempting to escape from Mount Eden prison was reported iin the Star, who was last November sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, and declared an habitual criminal for breaking, entering, and theft of the Otago. Farmers’ Co-operative Association at. Dunedin and Mosgiel, and for escaping from custody. Curiously enough Christie’s death took place exactly one year after sentence—November 8. Christie, whose aliases. include the names of Maxted and Williams, achieved a notorious record in the annals of crime in Australia and New Zealand. He embarked on his career early in life, being only 15 years when he received a birching for theft at Masterton in 1908. Later he was sent to Burnham Industrial School, promptly escaped from there, and was 1 caught and returned to, school. In 1911 he was convicted of burglary, but after serving portion of his sentence of some years he again proved .too elusive, and broke away. He then was arrested at Port Chalmers, where he had broken and entered a number of cribs. Again gaols could not hold him, and in the next five or six years lie was alternately in and out of prison. His sentences included terms of tour years, two years (on each of two charges), ten years’ reformative treatment, five years, six months, two years, and declared an habitual criminal, six months on each of two charges, six months, two years, and finally the sentence which he received last* November.

Most of his escapes were daring and sensational; from trains and boats he got away from police escorts. “No wonder they wanted to forget him,” said the Australian writer, already quoted. “He had, in his time, set the whole community in a state ,of panic, committing- robbery in lonely places', breaking gaol, and finally escaping from an asylum.” Back in Australia, Maxted as he was then called, went to Melbourne, where he received a sentence of itwo years as a rogue and vagabond. A large quantity of gelignite was found in his possession. Resort to insanity again served him, and he was transferred to Kew Asylum, whence he escaped. A man of quick action, Christie came back to New Zealand as a stowaway on the steamer Moeraki, and stepped ashore at Dunedin in the latter part of last year. How he was arrested in Dunedin, and how the crime of burgling the premises of the Otago Farmers’ Co-operative Association, was the story unfolded in the Supreme Court here when lie stood his trial just a year. ago.

Christie’s crimes all related to breaking, entering and theft, forgery, and escaping from custody, and there is no record of any case of assault- or personal violence towards anyone. He appears to have specialised as a ‘‘cracksman.” ,