THEFT FROM TILL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23011, 12 April 1938, Page 16

THEFT FROM TILL

INCIDENT AT HOTEL THEATRICAL SINGER'S ACT COMMENT BY MAGISTRATE "You cannot go on doing this sort of thing all your life and expect to escape imprisonment," said Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., in the Police Court yesterday, convicting Leo Trennette, theatrical singer, aged 32, on an admitted charge of stealing £l3 from William John Hickey, hotel licensee, on April 3. Mr. Moody represented accused. Sub-Inspector Flanagan said accused was a boarder at complainant's hotel and returned from a party at about three o'clock on the morning of April 3. He had some liquor and then went upstairs to his room, undressed and returned to the private bar. He opened the till and took a fist full of notes. Although he appeared to think there was no one about, accused was actually never out of the sight of a porter, continued Mr. Flanagan. Accused left the bar, went out on a fire escape, and when the licensee, who was called, entered his room he was in bed, feigning to be asleep. When a constable arrived to take accused away, he found £lO on the fire escape, wrapped up just as the money was taken from the till. On the way to the police station accused admitted the offence. "Unfortunately, this man has a list in Australia, where he also has a wife and child," Mr. Flanagan added. Mr. Moody said accused's trouble was drink. He showed evident signs of drunkenness when arrested, so that he committed what looked more like a drunken act than theft. His wife and child had been ill, and, being short of money, he apparently thought, in his drunken condition, that he had a chance of getting some by acting in the way he did. He nad not been sentenced to any term of imprisonment in Australia, to which he intended to . return at the end of May. The magistrate said accused had twice been convicted, the last time six years ago. Probably the reason the Court in Australia had been lenient toward him was because it recognised that he was under the influence of liquor when he committed his offences.

Accused was ordered to make restitution of £3 and come up for sentence on May 27.