MANY CONVICTIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21961, 19 November 1934, Page 10

MANY CONVICTIONS

ACCUSED MAN'S CAREER GAOL IN NEW ZEALAND LONDON, Nov. 12 The remarkable career of Rupert Willoughby, aged 41, engaged the attention of a Marylebone magistrate, when the defendant was remanded for medical examination. Evidence was given that Willoughby was variously stated to liavo been born in Australia, Petrogradj Devonshire and Cairo, where his father was a Government official. He was educated at Cambridge.

The man was convicted in Sydney in 1925 on a charge of refusing to pay for accommodation, and had similar convictions in New Zealand, Paris and London. He was deported to Australia from Los Angeles, arrested for fraud in Minorca, deported from Spain after two months' imprisonment, arrested for fraud in Italy, and sentenced, but put over tho Yugoslavian border, posed as an author and journalist in Albania, and was deported from Athens as a British subject. Willoughby denied having been in Albania and Yugoslavia, and also that ho had been convicted in France, Spain and Italy, but admitted having served two months' imprisonment in New Zealand, saying that that was owing to his giving his name to company promoters, who decamped with the capital. Accused said he went to pieces on his liberation and was soveral times imprisoned on the other side of tho world, so ho went to the island of Mityleno, as the only place in. Europe where he did not need a passport. There he was imprisoned for seven months and a-half, after which the police chained and beat him senseless and threw him on to a steamer bound for England.