YOUNG HOUSE WRECKERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18411, 29 May 1923, Page 8

YOUNG HOUSE WRECKERS.

TWO VIOLENT BOYS.

SENSATIONAL ADMISSIONS.

The wrecking, at Malvern, near Melbourne, of the house of Mrs. Lister, a war widow and a noted inter-State tennis player, during her absence on holidays, had its sequence in the visit of a plainclothes constable to a certain State school. There he arrested two boys, aged eleven and eight, and without much questioning they admitted their guilt. - The boys said they picked up an axe in the yard and broke the window. They made a search for money and jewellery. They then commenced to chop up articles of furniture with the axe. Tiring of this they found a razor and began to rip open the upholstering of the chairs. Next, the eight-year-old boy discovered two bottles of beer, and he drained the bottles./ The elder boy tasted the beer, but disliking the taste he swallowed none of it. Before leaving the house, one of the boys picked up a heavy glass pot and aimed it at a large mirror hanging on tho wall. The mirror was shattered. Finally they chopped the tap off the water main and then destroyed the how bv cutting it into foot lengths. When a detective asked the boys where they had hidden the stolen jewellery they took him to the Methodist Church in Malvern. They showed where a hole had been bunowed by them underneath the church. One boy wormed his way through the hole and produced the jewellery, which he handed over to the detective. They said they had been to the picture* frequently, and had obtained their housebreaking idea from this source. The boys admitted that they had planned further robberies. They intended, to knock «t the door* of bouse* and if they were answered to ask J » stray dog had been seen.