Trickster Uses Unusual Ingenuity

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 664, 16 May 1929, Page 1

Trickster Uses Unusual Ingenuity

CAREER OF CRIME EXTENSIVE FRAUDS With the aid of an unusually fertile imagination, Edward Arthur Feters has for more than two years supplemented what legitimate income he had by ingenious frauds. He pleaded guilty at the Police Court this morning on three charges of theft and 11 of false pretences. Peters, described as a labourer aged 35, worked the North Island thoroughly. He was arrested at Kaikohe, where he practically gave himself up and the record of his exploits extehds as far South as Marton and to Hastings and Wanganui in the east and west respectively.

It was in November, 1927, that Peters commenced his burst of crime by obtaining £2 10s from William Bendall by false pretences. The story he told "on that occasion was that he required the money to buy an invalid chair for his child in the King George Hospital, Rotorua. Peters was then quiet for six months, and his next escapade was the theft of £2 at Hastings on June 16, 1928. Wanganui was his next territory, where he extracted £3 from Robert Stockley by describing himself as a horse trainer. The sympathetic hearing given by the charitable to pathetic stories was exploited by the trickster in Mataura on August 21. He told Murdoch Campbell that his wife had died at Stillwater and that he required £G for his fare to go there. Mr. Campbell paid up. Continuing his grand tour, Peters made an appearance at Eketahuna on September 5, where ho stole jewellery valued at £37 from George Louis Halberg. Representing to Frederick McKay at Marton on September 18 that he was a farmer at Hunterville and wanted two colts trained, Peters lifted another £2 and set out for the North, his next stop being at Churchill near Mercer. There, on April 4, 1929, lie stole a fountain pen and 50 blank cheque forms valued at £1 10s 2d from Max Russell Watt.

Equipped with both pen and cheques Peters sallied forth on a series of frauds involving worthless cheques, and the remaining seven charges against him are in respect of these episodes. The charges all relate to offences committed in April. The total amount obtained by Peters was £55 15s. According to Chief-Detective Hammond, Peters had taken a lot of finding, and warrants had been out for him all over the country. Finally he had practically given himself up at Kaikohe after covering the North Island quite thoroughly. “He has issued valueless cheques and told the usual tales,” added the chief detective. “Altogether he got about £lO4 out of his frauds.” Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M.: I think he told a good number of unusual tales. It was mentioned by the police that Peters’s record included three years probation for false pretences and that the sentence had been passed in 1926. Shortly afterward he had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for theft.

Peters had nothing to say and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment to be followed by two years’ reformative detention.