DARING ESCAPE

Southland Times, Issue 25385, 12 September 1935, Page 12

DARING ESCAPE

YOUNG PRISONER’S RUSE. JOURNEY BY AEROPLANE. An unprecedented method was lately used by Arthur Charles Watson, aged 21, in escaping from Boggo Road Gaol, Brisbane. Watson, who was serving a term of imprisonment for theft and illegal use of a motor car and was employed as a kitchen-boy and gardener at the home of the superintendent, left the prison in stolen clothes, and headed straight for the Archerfield aerodrome. There he presented himself as the son of the prison superintendent, Mr F. J. Whitney. Watson took his seat as a passenger in the aeroplane for Toowoomba, and, unknown to the authorities of that city, he landed and disapneared while the police were still searching for him in Brisbane.

Watson had apparently planned his escape for a time when the house was unoccupied. It is believed that he went to the room of Alan Whitney, son of the superintendent, where he changed his garb for a suit belonging to the young man. In the pocket of Whitney’s suit he found a wallet containing a motor-driving licence and a £1 note. As soon as the guard in the tower overlooking the yard had turned his back, it is believed the escapee crept close to the wall of the house toward the main door of the prison. He then made his escape with comparative ease.

Watson sprang over a low fence, said a railway official who saw him, and walked leisurely down the road, where he hailed a taxi and got to the aerodrome in time to catcji the New England Airways aeroplane for Toowoomba. The taxi drove up, and Watson sprang out. He breathlessly explained that he had to get to Toowoomba in a desperate hurry, as he wished to reach the bedside of his mother, who was dangerously ill. There was little time to argue as the machine was due to leave, but to lull any suspicion the would-be passenger produced young Mr Whitney’s driving licence, by which he identified himself. He said, ‘Everything will be all right, and the fare can be charged to my father, Mr Whitney.” He was allowed to enter the machine and a moment later it was soaring. The amazing luck which attended Watson in his daring escape was illustrated the next day. At Archerfield aerodrome, Watson evaded certain capture only because a telephone box chanced to be locked. The pilot of the aeroplane, Mr P. H. Moody, was thus unable to verify Watson’s story that he was the son of the prison superintendent. As the man who had the key to the telephone box happened to be in another part of the aerodrome, the pilot returned to the aeroplane and Watson took his place with the other passengers. The falsity of Watson’s story was not discovered until more than an hour after the machine arrived at Toowoomba, when the manager of the company telephoned Mr Whitney that “his son had left to see his dying mother.”