ATTEMPTED ESCAPE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3098, 30 July 1913, Page 3

ATTEMPTED ESCAPE.

AUCKLAND, July 23. On Friday evening the Mount Eden Gaol was tlie scene of another attempted escape by a prisoner. The attempt was made by the youth Robin Jasper Crago, who achieved notoriety last year by'an attempt to blackmail Mr J. J. Craig, and as the centre figure in the Takapuna motor car shooting case, which earned him a sentence of 10 years’ reformative treatment. Crago has since been lodged in the Mount Eden Gaol.

About an hour after “lights out” the warder on duty in the corridor of the prison wing where Crago’s cell is situated heard a suspicious sound, which he in a few minutes located as proceeding from Crago's cell. Peeping through the spyhole of the cell he saw Crago busy at the outside window of the cell. He called another warder, and when he looked aga : n through the spy-hole he saw that Crago hud crossed to the interior wall of the cell. In a corner near the door of the cell is a recess containing a gas jet, the recess being of glass on the side opening into the cell to prevent the prisoner from interfering with the light. Crago had broken the glass protecting the gas jet, and had his hand inside the recess doing something to the gas. The warder, from outside the recess, grabbed Crago’s hand where it was at the jet and held it till the warder who had been summoned came.

An inquiry revealed that the youth .ad made most elaborate arrangements for escape. Attached to the gas jet was the end of a length of tubing, which reached across the cell to the outside window. At the other end of the tubing was a lead can in the form of a tube, flattened at the end, so as to concentrate the flame of gas. The object of the gas tubing with the blowpipe cap was to silently break the glass of the cell window. Then the prisoner intended to play his extempord blowpipe on the iron bam of the window with a view to bending and levering them aside when he had sufficiently heated them. While ineffective for the purpose intended, the tubing was a surprisingly ingenious piece of work. It was made < f sanitary paper and leaves from tlie Bible which was put in the cell. The sanitary paper was rolled lengthwise, making a cylinder, and this had been reinforced and kept in roll bv the leaves of the Bible being gummed round it at intervals. Crago had obtained “gum” for his purpose bv saving portions of In's porridge. Tho prisoner was sentenced to four days’ confinement on a bread and water diet.