ACCOMPLISHED SWINDLER.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 6 May 1925, Page 5

ACCOMPLISHED SWINDLER.

DECEIVES CREDULOUS WOAIEN

SENTENCED TO THREE YEARS.

Oswald Charles AJorgan, alias William Theodore Thompson, alias Edward Theodore Scott, who visited Wanganui recently and obtained a nice velour coat on the cheap and some £lO odd by means of a forged cheque, seems to have had an interesting career since he came to the Dominion about four years ago. He was sentenced at AYellington on Monday to three years’ re-Joi-mative detention.

Police investigations show that he first came under observation at Dunedin and received a sentence of two years’ probation, which lie did not comp y with. He was next heard of in the vVairarapa on Glenohu station, where he made the acquaintance of the housekeeper, Miss .Janet Nelson. He convinced the latter that he had been an officer in, the navy; and she consented •to leave her employment and go to Wellington with him, taking her six-year-old daughter. Under the name of Scott Morgan . married , Airs Nelson. She had about £3OO at the time, and Morgan soon disposed of this by living extravagantly. He then took the unfortunate woman, and her daughter to Christchurch, where he deserted her. She took up her residence with her daughter at a house near Sumner, and on January- 9, 1922, she was found dead with her daughter in a bedroom, apparently asphyxiated by gas. Later in the same year he became acquainted with a . young lady from Whangarei who was in Auckland, represented himself to he wealthy and she promised to marry him. He accompanied the gill to her home fit Whangarei, and while there succeeded in obtaining two pendants from a local jeweller on approval. These, lie took to Auckland and pawned. He was arrested and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. A further term oE imprisonment followed later for obtaining money under false pretences. Before coming to AVanganui lie was working in the King Country, and there met a married woman and persuaded her to leave her husband and children. This woman he brought to Wanganui with him, and it was presumably for her that he obtained the velour' coat. She had some money when she left home, hut after his arrest she was destitute.