"CAT" FOR A YOUTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18996, 18 April 1925, Page 2 (Supplement)

"CAT" FOR A YOUTH.

ATTEMPTED MURDER CASE. " A DIABOLICAL DESIGN." Sentence of 21 . months' hard labour and 20 strokes of the " cat " was passed at the Old Bailey on Robert Oulagi, the lad of 18 accused of robbery with violence and of the attempted vnurder on January 9 of Eva Bragg, a cook, who was found bound to a burning bed in a house in Gloucester Terrace, Paddington. -Max Onlagi, the father, a naturalised British subject, of Richmond Road, Bayswater, said his son used to go to the cinema three or four times a week, and had collected reports of sensational criminal trials. For the defence, Mr. Eustace Fulton said that he could not say that Oulagi was insane, but there must be some curious abnormality about the youth who had committed these crimes after living a per-, fcctly respectable life up to December last. Since December he had committed four burglaries, in three of which ho had done wanton and stupid acts. In one he turned on the water, in another the gas, and in another ho had thown ink over a quantify of cigarettes. He had used violence to Miss Bragg which even the most callous and hardened criminal would have hesitated Jo do, and had made a statement which was really a glorification of his acts. It savoured ratlier of the cinema than of life. Mr. Justice Avory: Are you suggesting they teach this kind of thing at the cinema theatre? Counsel: I seldom go there. I have a diary kept by him which seems to show that the sort of film he went to sec was of the American " crook " kind, in which persons commit acts similar to those of this young man. Oulagi told the judge that " a sort of uncontrollable impulse " came over him. Mr. Justice Avory said that Oulagi, with great premeditation and considerable cunning, had ascertained by means of the telephone that there was no one in the house except Miss Bragg. He had beaten her on the head with a hammer and a clothes-brush, thrown ashes over her, and dragged her about the house in order to find out where any property was to be found. Ho had afterwards gagged her and tied her in a chair. " Not content with the steps you had taken to secure your own escape," he continued, " you then proceeded in what can only be described as a diabolical design to make it impossible for her to give evidence against you by setting fire to the bed near to where she was tied helpless. " By the merest accident her stifled cries roused the attention of neighbours, and by the aid of the police she was rescued just alive from her awful position. It is quite obvious that you were in full possession of all your mental faculties, and but for your youth I should have sent you to penal servitude for a long term."