TOO FOND OF EASY MONEY

NZ Truth, Issue 1206, 10 January 1929, Page 8

TOO FOND OF EASY MONEY

Leonard Cooper's Absence From Hotel At Midnight On Pilfering Excursion Shortly Before Post Office Was Ablaze LETTERS THROWN AWAY LED TO ARREST (From "N.Z. Truth's" Oamaru Representative). " i. ' — — '-fi m : : : : ~

Leonard "Walter Cooper is of that wistful fraternity which regards everybody's property as anybody's opportunity: They're a fretful gathering, these nimble-fingered ones, and if the lining to your overcoat seems attractive to them— whisk ! Off it comes. : • . • If you keep a shop, it is advisable to protect it with electrified barbed-wire entanglements, otherwise, men like Cooper might come along and help themselves. . Cooper is an opportunist of that kidney, but his skids on the rails of property law landed him head first into the bosom of the law, whereon he now rests until a judge decides how long one of the gaols shall entertain him.

WHEN he appeared before Magistrate Bundle m the Oamaru Police Court, Cooper pleaded guilt} to seven charges, including breaking and entei'ing, theft and arson. His initial misdemeanour seems tc have been scratched across his family tree on October 6, when he and a party of fellow-workmen from the Awakirio hydro- electric works at Kurow camr into Oamaru by taxi, went to the races and l'eturned to the Northern Hotel where they booked rooms for the night Cooper and two others shared a double bed. About half-past ten that night, Cooper mentioned an appointment with a girl friend, who was tc meet him after the pictures. Borrow-

Filled Suit-cases

mg 1 a coat from one of his companions, Cooper left the building. He was fairly drunk at the time, yet through his fuddled senses an earlier determination to burgle a shop he had "spotted" during the day must have been fairly prominent, since . about midnight he smashed the front window of Hendy's drapery establishment, filled two suitcases with various useful things, and decamped.

When the other two men awoke next morning, they found that Cooper had returned, s and were somewhat surprised to find that since they had last seen him he had added two suitcases to his personal belongings.

He was due to return to the Oamaru public hospital, w h ere previously he had received treatment for a strain received while working on the

site of the hydroelectric scheme. On the morning of October 7, after breakfast, he returned to his room, extracted the suitcases from beneath the bed, ,and went away to the hospital. In the afternoon, a friend of his called at the hospital, and took charge of the suitcases until such time as Cooper required them. Meanwhile, the local, police were raking- the town fore and aft for the stolen property, but could find no trace of it. * On his discharge from the hospital, Cooper returned to Kurow, taking up

Sold Overcoat

his residence with a family named Pile. In the meantime he had disposed of the double-breasted overcoat he borrowed from one of his room-mates m the Northern Hotel, the disposal price being £1, according to Cooper, which, he says, ho never received. Between the night of adventure m Hendy's shop and December 2, Cooper seems to have led a blameless life, but the ways of innocence began to pall on him, and when he had made an ineffectual attempt to secure some liquor at the Railway Hotel m Kurow, he cast about m his mind for something to dp. Eventually he decided to burgle the

|Post Office. Late that night he •mashed the winlow, unfastened the atch, and m less :han two minutes >vas standing alongside the mail-sort-.ng pigeonholes. Thrusting a bundle of letters tnto one of his pockets, Cooper scrambled hastily through the win:low, walked quickly m the direction of his lodgings and, having reached the seclusion of his own bedroom, he sat upon the bed and proceeded to examine the spoils. The first letter he opened contained a cheque for £15/16/6, which he retained. He stuffed the remainder of the correspondence back into his pocket, left the house, and was proceeding back m the direction of the Post Office with the intention of throw--ing the mail

through the win- , dow when he caught the ruddy reflection of a lire somewhere m the neighborhood of his destination.

Hunning' towards the Railway Station and Post Office, Cooper saw that by some means or other the Post Office had caught on fire, and through his confused brain must have travelled the thought that he was responsible, since he had smoked a number of cigarettes during his search of the Post Office premises. Confused and apprehensive, he threw ,the letters from him as far aa he could hurl them. The next morning, Cooper did not go to work. Instead, he took the bus to Oamaru, visited Bulleid's, the drapers, and having made various purchases to the value of £1/12/2, he proffered the cheque he had taken from the envelope ad-

dressed to a man named Ryan, whose signature Cooper forged on the hack of the cheque for £15/16/6, and received the change. .

The sight of so much money seems to have bewildered him, for he engaged a taxi to take him home to Kurow, spent money rather freely among 1 his friends there, and made himself a wonderfully good fellow — on Ryan's money. He called at the camp paymaster's office, told that official he was leaving the job and collected the balance of the wages due to him, some three or four pounds. Apparently he had every intention of making a clean getaway, and but for the fact that a horse shied on the road which leads to the Railway Station and Post Office, Cooper, by this time, might be strolling merrily along the highways of some other country.

Letters On Road

About the time when he was collecting his pay from the camp office, a farmer named Delargy was riding along the station road, when suddenly his horse shied violently away from something white on the roadside. Delargy dismounted, and when he led his horse to the side of the road, discovered a sheaf of letters — presumably those missing from the Kurow Post Office, which now lay m ruins.

Hastily remounting 1 , the farmer returned to the township and handed the letters to Constable D.evi/ne, who m turn lost no time m making a speedy report to the responsible authorities

Within a few hours of the discovery, Detective Nuttall arrived from Timaru, and before long he gleaned sufficient evidence to justify a warrant being issued for Cooper's arrest.

Almost synchronising with the discovery made by Delargy, came fresh information concerning a gold watch chain which had been stolen from the hut of a man named John Thompson some time previously. It appears that at the time when Thompson missed his property, Cooper had shared the hut with him, and on the morning of Detective Nuttall's arrival m Oamaru, the police were advised that the chain had been found m the possession of a taxi-driver named Harry Foster.

Caught On Ferry

Meanwhile, Cooper had slipped away from Oamaru, but on the morning of December 8 he was tapped on the shoulder by one of two detectives, just as he was about to leave the ferry steamer at the Wellington wharf. He then knew that his somewhat active term of adventure was ended.

If his soul craves new experiences, there is no doubt but that the judge will provide him. with the stimulus for an expei'ience which is ever new, to men of Cooper's type — the adventure of work, through which he seems to ■have passed but hazily.