AUCKLAND PRISONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21827, 14 December 1932, Page 8

AUCKLAND PRISONS

ESCAPES AND RECAPTURES ONLY TWO RETAIN THEIR LIBERTY. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, December 13. With the recapture on Sunday of Frederick William Schluter, the prisoner who escaped from Mount Eden Gaol an April 29, only two criminals ivho have escaped from custody in the Auckland Province this year have not been recaptured. Several men have made a bid for liberty during the past 12 months,, some from Mount Eden Prison, some from Auckland Hospital, and some from country prison camps, but with these two exceptions all have been recaptured after varying periods at large. Last month two young men, Arthur Albert Clayton, aged 20, and Graham Wilfred Morton, aged 21, escaped from the Borstal Institution at Waikeria. They were recaptured at Taneatua, in the Bay of Plenty, three days after their escape. The last attempt to escape from Mount Eden was in August, when a prisoner, R. Venables, made an unsuccessful dash for liberty from a stone quarry. As he was climbing a wire fence at the edge of the prison . reserve a shot was fifed by a warder to warn him that he had been seen, and he submitted quietly to recapture. Earlier in the year two men, Albert Williams, aged 26, and Maurice Edward Wiston, aged 19, escaped from the Waikeria Borstal Farm while most of the other prisoners were engaged in outdoor sports. They were recaptured by warders on Mount Pirongia. a short distance away, two days later, surrendering without resistance.

One of the men who has never been traced is Charles Bennett, aged 26, who escaped with another man named Edgar William Allen from • the Hautu prison camp on February 21. The pair broke from their cells early in tho morning and stole a motor car in which they travelled a long distance. By removing further cars and abandoning them, the two men evaded the police for two weeks, travelling over a wide area. Allen was recaptured near Waverley, but Bennett escaped into the scrub. A short time previously a prisoner who was undergoing treatment at the Auckland hospital, Roy George Cudby, aged 29, who had previously escaped from Wellington Hospital and remained at liberty for two years,_ evaded the warder who was guarding him and made his escape from Wallace Ward. He was recaptured two days later. Similar circumstances attended the escape of Thomas William Wilson, aged_ 26, who was serving a live years’ term in Mount Eden prison for a series of crimes in Dunedin, including a vicious attack on an aged pawnbroker and his wife. He also escaped from Auckland Hospital last December and efforts to trace him since have met with no success. It is believed by the police that he left New Zealand for Australia, where he was born and had many friends.