"LAW ALWAYS GETS YOU"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18992, 17 April 1936, Page 13

"LAW ALWAYS GETS YOU"

CRIMINAL'S DECLARATION RETURN TO SERVE TERM WISH TO START AFRESH (Per Pross Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. "I've quit crime. It doesn't pay. The law always gets you." said a passenger travelling" by the Mariposa under'the name of W. C. Henry, who is being deported from America to Australia at his own request, knowing that h 4 lias a term of live years of gaol to serve at Sydney for robbery. In 1931. Henry, then known as Thomas William Wilson, came to luver-ea-rgill. Four months later he was associated with four charges of breaking. entering and stealing, a total of £4791 being involved, at Dunedin. On these, and U-o further charges of assault and doing grievous bodilv harm, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour, with a year's reformative detention thereafter. Early in .July he was brought to Auckland to complete the term at Mount Kden. Six months later, after being in hospital for five days with an internal complaint, he left his bed at 10 o'clock at night to go to the lavatory and was not seen again. Shortly afterwards, he boarded a ship and sailed for America, having been assisted by friends of the underworld. At Suva a surgical operation was necessary. ARREST IN CALIFORNIA

After travelling over America, Henry was arrested in California on a robbery charge and sentenced to gaol for 15 vears. While at San Quentin, he decided to give up crime, and was released on parole. He asked to be deported to Sydney, so that ho could do the term of live years hanging over his head there. Knowing that also lie had over four years to serve in New Zealand, he wrote to the Governor-General, Viscount Galway, asking for a pardon.

Detectives interviewed him aboard the Mariposa. Had the police insisted on arresting him, they would have had to pay a bond of £IOO to the chief officer," under whose charge Henry is travelling without an escort, the pas-sage being paid by the Australian Government.

Henry is full of gratitude for the manner in which he has been treated by the ship's officers. "I tell you fellows," be said to interviewers, "I've quit. I am now 33 and have spent a good deal of my life in gaol. 1 want to start afresh. I've a wife and a little daughter in Australia, and want to do the right thing by them."