SPEEDY Fast Career Stops Short

NZ Truth, Issue 1103, 20 January 1927, Page 5

SPEEDY Fast Career Stops Short

(From N.Z. Truth's" Special Wellington Rep.) ' , ''If you start a thing, go the whole hog" is the. motto of Harold Joseph Whittle (or Tobin, according to circumstances). THAT is, if his statement,' as read at the Wellington Magistrate's Court, where he was charged with the theft of a £265 Buick car and sundry other articles that would add to his creature comfort whilst doing the Bights, is correct. v Whilst strolling past the Wellington Town Hall, the graceful lines of the car rather appealed to his aesthetic make-up, so he twiddled the gears and tooled away to Tokomaru, a few miles south of Pa,lmerston North. Joe was no ordinary car-thief, and the memoirs of Sherlock Holmes seem to have shown him one or two useful pointers m re the camouflaging of cars. Outside the picture show at Tokomaru he changed number-plates with a car standing outside, after which ■■ he helped himself to a few things from the body of the car. Having thus acquired a car, a.travelling rug and a comfortable overcoat, he spent the next few days on the king's highway, distributing rides largesse on a few tins of benzine he acquired by misrepresentation. '"7 It was during a trip to Hamilton, when he played host to a former employer and his wife, that Fate placed her hands on the : steering-wheel and guided the car over the bank. From thence it was but a short step to the Cambridge police station, thence to Wellington, where S.M.. Riddell soon summed up the luxury-loving one. Whittle pleaded guilty, m addition to serving', two 1 concurrent '" sentences of three months each for theft of clothing, he was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence on the major charge of stealing the car.