TWO POLICE CHARGED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23828, 7 June 1939, Page 20

TWO POLICE CHARGED

SEQUEL TO PENSIONER'S DEATH

(From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, May 19.

The disappearance of £4O from a hut in which the body of an oldaged pensioner, James Ordish, was found, resulted in two policemen being committed for trial on a charge of theft, at the Wentworth (south-west New South Wales) Courthouse.

The charge of having stolen £4O, the property of the New South Wales Public Trustee, was against Sergeant Cecil Roy Kirk and Constable John Theodore Rowland. The hut in which Ordish lived was in the Wentworth police paddock. George Boxhall, an old-age pensioner, said in evidence that he found Ordish dead, and Rowland and Kirk were the next persons to visit the hut. Robert Jackson, of Wentworth, said that when he went to the hut he saw Sergeant Kirk pick up a parcel and saw bank notes. Later the police accused him of having taken the money. Constable Rowland threatened to bash him, and tried to make him admit having taken it.

John A. McGeorge, undertaker, said that he had seen Kirk with a roll of £4O, but that night Kirk told him the money was missing. Both Kirk and Rowland then asked him to bury Ordish as a pauper. Both also accused Jackson of having taken the money, but he would have stuck to Jackson through thick and thin, because he knew him to be innocent.

F. H. Horsington, clerk of Petty Sessions at Wentworth, said both defendants had come to him and asked how much he wanted for the burial. They had £4O belonging to Ordish. Next day, Kirk told him that somebody had " pinched " the money.