“SLIPPERY SAM” AGAIN

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 September 1934, Page 9

“SLIPPERY SAM” AGAIN

SOME DARING BURGLARIES FIVE HOUSES VISITED raids during week-end. Working swiftly and silently, “Slippery Sam,” or a daring house burglar of his type, carried out a raid on a large scale between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. in the Ponsonby district, Auckland, on Sunday, when he entered five houses and stole sums of money and a suit of clothes.

lir each case th e dwellings entered were those occupied by working class people who could ill afford to lose even the small sums of money stolen. In one of the three houses entered in. Oliphant Street, he was nearly caught, and in another house he winded himself by coming into contact with a bedpast, but quickly made his escape by way of the back door, hotl\’ pursued by the' occupants. The house thief commenced his Sunday morning operations by entering the house of Mr V. J. McMaster, a relief worker, at No. IQ Oiiphant Street. As the back door was closed but not locked, entrance was an easy matter. The occupants heard no sound to cause them to awaken, and the first that was known of the visitation was when Mr McMaster got up to find the door of the wardrobe in his bedroom wide open. His trousers were missing, but these nether garments he later found in the passage. They had been rifled of £l.

From two other bedrooms in the same house were stolen two purses, one containing 9s and the other Bs. The drawers in each bedroom had been ransacked.

WINDOW PROPPED UP. “Since I had an operation a few weeks ago I have slept very soundly, otherwise I would have heard any stranger in the house,” said Mr VV. Foran, of No. 12, Oiiphant Street, to a reporter this morning. Mr Foran said his daughter, who was sleeping on a settee in the kitchen on. Saturday night, heard someone moving about the house, but thought it was one of the other male occupants who was ill at the time. Here the thief raised the small window of the kitchen and propped it up with a piece of board so that he would have a quick means of exit if discovered. Going to the front bedroom, where Mr and Mrs Foran were asleep, the burglar, without waking either sleeper, extracted a £1 note and 2s 3d in change from Mr Foran’s inside coat pocket. The coat was hanging on tile back of ths dooi. “I can ill afford to lose the £1 2s 3d,” saul Mr Foran, “as I have been out of work since the Mamaku sawmills closed down and also have the expenses of a serious operation to meet.”

A NARROW ESCAPE. The burglar got, nothing except a fright at the next house he enteied — that of Mrs A. Thomson, at iNo. 6, Oiiphant Street. Although 78 years old, Mrs Thomson is very active, and she promptly left her bed to deal with the b.urglar, despite the fact that he flashed the beam from an electric torch in her face.

Lifting a window in the kitchen without disturbing the blind which he left down, “Slippery Sam” crept quietly through, his first act being to open the back door from the inside and prop it wide open. Two of Mrs Thomson’s sons slept in a side room, but heard nothing. “My daughter Ethel was sleeping with me,” said Mrs Thomson, “and when she heard, the noise of someone in the passage she thought it was one of my sons. But when she saw a thick set man wearing a grey overcoat and a hat pulled well down over his eyes, and carrying a, torch, walk past our bedroom door and examine clothes which were hanging up in the hall, she knew it was a burglar. She watched the man and the clothes, as they were right, opposite our bedroom, the . door of which was open. She kept quiet and watched the burglar. He then came into our room, stood just inside the doorway and flashed his electric torch on our faces. My daughter then gave a yell which woke m© up. She called out to the man in a loud voice, “What do you want there?” , We both jumped out of bed and ran into the passage in time to see the man going out the back door. The two boys got up and went out, but the man quickly scrambled over the back fence and jumped into the grounds of the Sacred Heart College and escaped. We never saw his face at all. He was a big man wearing a grey overcoat.” ' COLLIDES WITH BED. Between 5 and 5.30 yesterday morning the house of Mr and Mrs W. Noxom, at the corner of Farrar and Jessel Streets, near the Sacred Heart College, Rlichmond Road, was entered, evidently by the same burglar who raided the dwellings in Oliphant Street.

An unlocked back window was raised to allow entrance to be quietly effected. Two bedrooms were visited, one occupied by Mrs Noxom’s son, and her own bedroom in the front of the house, where she and her husband slept. From her son’s room the burglar stole £1 10s from the pocket of a. coat. In going through the pockets the intruder found a letter which was addressed all ready to post. This he thoughtfully left behind on the dressing table, together with a penny with which to purchase a stamp to post it. He stole the young man’s navy suit, worth £7 7s.

Mrs Noxom said her husband was awakened by the burglar as the latter was at work in the front bedroom. Waking to find the beams of a torch in his eyes. Mr Noxom called out “What’s that ” The burglar got a shock and in making a dive for the door struck his stomach on the end of the bed. “Ugh.” he gasped, as if he had been winded, but he quickly recovered and ran along the passage and out of an open door. Later he was heard by neighbours further down the street, running swiftly across sections to an open space covered with gorse. The fifth house entered was a dwelling in Wanganui Avenue, but here the intruder was also disturbed before he had time to examine the premises.