BOGUS MAJOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23601, 9 March 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOGUS MAJOR

Audacity of Ex-Convict Who Tried to Defraud a Bank

A TALL, handsome officeir in the khaki uniform of the Royal Arillery, proudly wearing two rows of ribbons on his chest, posed! with his bride on the steps of Bristol! Pro-Cathedral as cameras clicked one morning last September. He waii taking an audacious risk.

TU his bride and her many friends in Bristol society he was known- as Major Rollo Rennie, D.5.0., M.C., Croix de Guerre, part owner of five hotels, with an Army pension of £4OO a year. Yet police officers in various parts of Britain, if they had seen the wedding photograph, would have recognised the groom as a man who has spent 21 of the last 31 years in penal servitude. At the Old Bailey, London, Rollo Rennie, aged 53 —his real name Bex Campbell Rennie, and he lias also been known as Roderick Logan Rennie and Douglas Campbell—was sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment. Wed Four Times He pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with obtaining credit by false pretences; attempting to obtain money from the Croydon branch of the Westminster Bank, Limited, by false pretences; and with forging and uttering a forged document with intent to defraud. Detective-Inspector McGrath, of Scotland Yard, told Judge Beazlev that out of seven previous convictions Rennie had been sent to penal servitude on six occasions. Since 1908, when he was sent to penal servitude for three years for forgery at the Old Bailey, ho had served three sentences of three years' penal servitude, one of four and one of five. Inspector McGrath described Rennie as a "much-married man!" "We know that he has been married four times, three times since 1926," the officer stated. "The first wife is dead, but what has happened to two of them we do not know. Unfortunately, we cannot discover whether this man has committed bigamy." Inspector McGrath added that Rennie, who described himself as a schoolmaster, was at one time a non-

commissioned schoolteacher with tha Royal Artillery, and it was in that regiment that he claimed to have been promoted major and to have been awarded three decorations for bravery. War Office records do not show a Major Rollo Rennie of the R.A., and there is no record of any officer of that name of any rank having been awarded the D.5.0., xM.C., or Croix de Guerre. After the marriage last September, Rennie and his bride left Bristol. It was not until after he had taken a house in Banstead, Surrey, that his deception was revealed and that his bride realised that she had married an exconvict. Still posing as Major Rennie. he began the operations which have landed him back in prison. Mr. G. G. Raphael, who prosecuted Rennie for his latest offences, explained that when he took the house, furnished, for six months, Rennie was totally without means -and incurred credit to the amount of £99. About the same time he attempted to obtain an unsecured overdraft from the Westminster Bank by false pretences. While in communication with the hank he asked for their reply to be sent in ordinary handwriting, ' not typewritten, "because of a defect in my sight, which shortly has to be operated on." Forged Letter Within a few day 6 of receiving, a handwritten reply, Mr. Raphael continued, Rennie, produced to a bank a letter purporting to come from the Westminster Bank at Croydon acknowledging a deposit account for £3OOO held on behalf of Major Rennie. This was the original letter of the Westminster Bank with the handwriting chemically erased. By these means, it was alleged, Rennie was attempting to negotiate a loan of £3OOO. Although Rennie has now exchanged the major's uniform —which, incidentally, he obtained on the hire-purchase system—for the rough grey of the convict, police investigations into his career have not ceased. Particular search is being made for a -Miss Annie Keogh, who is thought to have been one of fhe women Rennie married.