GANGSTER METHODS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4811, 20 February 1936, Page 2

GANGSTER METHODS

MELBOURNE HOLD-UP^ ESCORT SHOT IN COLD BLOOD. Sydney, February 5. The police of four States are engaged in a hunt for three bandits, who, in American gangster fashion, and working on a carfeully-prepared plan, fatally shot an elderly escort of a Government employee and stole £1758 of Treasury money. All roads leading from Melbourne to the borders of neighbouring States are being watched. All vessels, including those going to New Zealand, are being combed. No effort is being spared to find the three desperadoes, who, police believe, have not yet left the hiding place to which they sped immediately after the robbery. James Edward Scriven, 64, a Victorian Titles Office messenger, was escort to Herbert Gillbank, 18, who was taking the day’s takings from the office of the Comptroller of Stamps. Gillbank entered a taxicab with a bag containing the money, and Scriven was just about to enter the car when he was shot down in cold blood after a struggle. Scriven was armed, but he did not have a chance to draw his pistol. The bandit who seized the bag thrust Scriven aside, stepped back a pace, and deliberately shot him, while an accomplice stood by. The two thieves then escaped in a stolen car, the engine of which had been kept running in Little Lonsdale Street by a third ■man. They left behind them on the footpath the pistol which shot Scriven. The driver of the taxicab in which Scriven and Gillbank were going to the bank, pursued the bandits’ car on a motor cycle, but the men disappeared a few streets away. Scriven died the next day.

The bandits’ car had not gone far before it crashed into the veranda of a shop. They hastily abandoned it, and appeared at the Melbourne City Council destructor yard, where a dramatic encounter occurred between them .and Mr. J. Boadle, an official of the City Engineer’s Department. One man, Mr. Boadle told the police, walked back through the gate, but the other two walked down the destructor yard with the obvious intention of passing through a door leading into a lane into Spencer Street. “I noticed that one carried a kit bag, into which his hand thrust. I think they had another pistol in the bag, but at the time I was not aware of the hold-up/- said

Mr. Boadle. Puzzled by their actions, Mr, Boadle challenged the men, but they made an apparently reasonable excuse about an accident, and they were permitted to leave. Later, however, after he had heard of the hold-up, Mr. Boadle'communicated with the police. The bandits, after leaving the yard, stole another car, and that was the last news of them.

The car they first used was stolen a fortnight previously. In the meantime its colour had been changed from light blue to black, and the number from 60736 to 86730. Police said that the pistol used to shoot Scriven had characteristics unlike those of any other pistol in Melbourne. The pistol is a .32 calibre Web ley Scott, carrying seven bullets in the magazine. The right-hand side of the vulcanite butt has a long curved crack from shoulder to heel of the butt. Across the top and bottom of the butt are two metal bands in each of which there are four metal studs. These bands were made and fitted by an expert craftsman to hold the cracked butt The police are anxious to interview anyone who has seen this pistol, or anyone who may have made the bands for the butt.

Other clues which were discovered by the police include two small paint brushes, four pieces of sand paper, a hat, and a pair of grey trousers. They were found in the car usedby the thieves. The light grey hat halT a white lining, which has been partly torn out so that it can be drawn over the face as a mask.

Mrs. Scriven, widow of the murdered messenger, criticised the lack of an effective escort to guard the transfer of large sums of money. “My husband had complained that the procedure adopted by the department would some day attract bandits,” she said. His fears were realised only too tragically a few months before his retirement from the service. Now that my husband has been murdered I suppose the Government will do something to minimise the danger to money escorts, which cost only a few shillings each time.

The Premier (Mr. Dunstan) announced a day or so later that more effective steps would be taken immediatley to guard large sums of Government money in transit and employees’ lives.