DEVOTION LEADS TO CRIME.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18797, 9 February 1931, Page 2

DEVOTION LEADS TO CRIME.

STRANGE STORY TOLD LONDON COURTS. United Press Association—By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright (Received February 8, 10.30 p.m.) LONDON, February 8. “He would not have been criminal if he had not loved me,” said Shelagh Kann, aged 24, in pleading guilty at the Middlesex Sessions to three charges of housebreaking with her husband, George Evelyn Hann, aged 31, whom the detective described as the son of the superintendent of prisons at Fremantle.

Shelagh admitted giving a false name, when married.

The detective gave evidence that Shelagh had been trained as a hospital nurse, but gave up, owing to ill-health. She disappeared from home and lost her memory in 1928, but recovered it, and married Hann in December. Hann served with the British Army during the war, and later joined the American Army, after which he became a ship’s steward. Hann told the Bench his wife was bitterly opposed to the burglaries. Once when he was going out, she took the tools and threw them into the river. He pleaded that other men were involved. He spent every penny on his wife’s and his own maintenance. He hoped to get sufficient from Australia. Shelagh said her husband had done all for her, owing to illness preventing him working. Hann was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment, and Shelagh to twelve months, both in the second division.