SENSATIONAL STORY OF THREAT OF BURIAL IN CONCRETE TOLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19060, 3 May 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

SENSATIONAL STORY OF THREAT OF BURIAL IN CONCRETE TOLD.

Man Alleges That He Was Beaten With Chains And Tied To A Bed. (Special to the " Star.”) SYDNEY, April 22. Burial in a block of concrete in a hole near a hut at Cabramatta after having been shot dead was a new threat which Vigilio Cace, a Czechoslovakian , alleged in the Central Court to-day was made to him by Charles M’Dermott while he lay chained hand and foot to a bed. This threat, Cace declared , was contingent on his refusal to write a letter to the Police Commissioner against Constable Chuck. " I was frightened of the revolver. 1 wrote the letter,” he told Mr Perry, S.M. All four defendants, who reserved their defence, were committed for trial by Mr Perry, S.M., at the Quarter Sessions on May 1. “ I find that there is a strong prima facie case against all of you,” said the magistrate.

Charles M’Dermott, forty-two, motor driver, George Walter William Hatch, twenty-two, clerk, John Degnan, twenty, labourer, and Sadie Goldman, thirtyeight, were charged with having conspired together, and with other persons, to defeat the ends of justice.. How he had been lured into a car with promises of “a good party" and was given a handbag as a present for one of the ladies at the party was told by Cace at the Central Police Court today. Cace told a sensational story of how a man cultivated his acquaintance at a residential, and how instead of finding a party at Cabramatta he was set on by three men and beaten, over the head with a chain. “I hope he is dead,” was the remark which Cace alleged had been made by Charles M’Dermott on the roadside at Cabramatta. Then, according to Cace, a bag was thrown over his head and he was carried into a house, gagged and chained to a bed. Virgilio Cace, a Czechoslovakian, said that he was a labourer. In March he had given evidence against Sadie Goldman in a licensing prosecution. At that time he was living in a residential in Castlereagh Street. On the night of March 17, a man came to his room, and told him that he came from Melbourne. The stranger brought a couple of bottles of beer with him, and said, “Before we talk we will have a drink.’* “He asked me if I knew the Devon, in George Street,” said Cace. “I said, ‘Yes, I caught that place.’ He said. ‘I am out of work. What do you do?’ I said, ‘I know a job working for the police.* He said, ‘I would like it. I have a lot of places for catching for beer in Sydney. We will work together.’ I said, *Very well.”* Preparations for the Party. “He slept there that night, and he was still in bed when I went out in the morning. When I got back at two o’clock in the afternoon I saw a letter on my bed. It had on it the name Jack Bazzani. That was the name he gave me. He read the letter. He said, ‘The letter says I go to the party tomorrow night, and if I got some friend, bring him along with me.’ He said, ‘You can come with me. You are my good friend.’ I said, ‘I am a stranger. I am frightened to go.’ He said, ‘You come with me. Don’t be frightened.* . . “On March 19 he asked me to see the police and tell them he would work for tbfem just as I do. We had lunch and went back to the residential. Bazzani had two handbags. He gave me the best one, saying that at the party I could give it to a lady. He said, ‘Wait near Parliament House, in Macquarie Street, for motor-car. I went and the car came along with a paper cap of red, green and yellow on the front. “Jack Bazzani said, ‘This is the car that we have to go to the party in.’ There were two bottles of beer in the car and the driver had a bottle oi whisky in his pocket. Bazzani said, ‘We are going eight miles from here.’ We got to Cabramatta at 3.30 p.m. “I got out of the car first. When I came to the front of the car a man named Jack asked for a match. I saw M’lntyre there too. When I went to put the matches in my pocket, M’lntyre hit me with something. The fellow Degnan hit me several times. Then M’Dermott came from behind the bush. He hit me six or seven times with a chain. “M’Dermott said: ‘I think he is dead, the .* They knocked me down, and I heard someone say, ‘Don’t shoot him!* They put a blanket over my head and carried me into a room. "I Was Frightened.” M’lntvre and Degnan, he said, carried him into the room, but he could not see them because they wore masks. “From four o’clock until 8 p.m. I was like dead,” Cace declared. When he recovered his senses he found himself trussed up on the bed. His head was very sore, but the bleeding had eased. On the Sunday morning at about ten o’clock he heard M’Dermott talking in another room about getting him (Cace) to write “a couple of letters”. M’lntvre, later, told Cace to “copy this letter,” which he gave him to read. Cace asked why they wanted him to write to Sergeant Jennings. “M’lntyre said to me, ‘You write this letter and you will be a good man for M’Dermott, and will not go him again.” Cace said he told M’lntyre he did not wish to write the letter. A consultation followed outside the room, and when M’lntyre and Degnan came back to the room they were masked, and told him he must write the letter. One of the men had a revolver, and Cace agreed to write because he was frightened. His bonds were removed while he wrote the letters. One was written to the woman who kept the residential at which Cace lived. This document read: “The Proprietor, 195. Castlereagh Street, residential. Dear Madam. —Sorrv did not see you. Gone to Queensland. Police made me tell lies about Yours truly, Virgilio Cace.” “M’Dermott came into the room and said, ‘Do you tnist me now?’” Cace proceeded. “I said, ‘Give me my life. • f want to go home.’ He said. ‘You have to write a few letters.’ He gave me five* letters to copy. One was for the Police Commissioner, and one for Mr Abigail. I knew Jack when he had the mask on because I saw him before in Court. I did not know M’lntyre when he had the mask on. “I said to M’Dermott, ‘What for this letter?* He said. ‘This is a letter for the Commissioner of Police against Mr Chuck, I think you know, for £IOOO ! damages.’ Mr Abigail is a good solicitor; I will tight Chuck for £IOOO. It I win £IOOO from Mr Chuck I will give vou £2OO and money for your passage to your own country. I will give £IOO to jack, and another man, and £2OO to Mr Abigail.’ “I said. ‘I do not want to write against Chuck, because I might need something from the police.’ M’Dermott said, ‘Don't be frightened. The police can do nothing to you. Mr Abigail will give you protection. The police cant { touch vou.’ I said. ‘I no want to 'write the letters.’ Then M’Dermott spoke loud and said, You must write

them. If you don’t write them we have a revolver and a rifle here. We will shoot you and dig a hole, drop you in the hole, and put concrete over you.* “I was frightened and started to cry. I agreed to write the letters, and M’lntyre undid my hands. Alleged Interview with Miss Goldman. “I heard M’Dermott in another room talking to somebody. He told somebody to go to Melbourne in the car and post the letters.” The next he saw of M’Dermott was on the following Tuesday, when he asked Cace how he was getting on. M’Dermott told him he was very busy, but remarked that he thought that “to-morrow night we may shift you to my farm.” Next day, Cace said, he was removed to the farm in a car accompanied by M’Dermott, M’lntyre, and Degnan. He was placed in a room, and his leg was fixed to the bed. M’Dermott then made him an offer to the effect that if he were a good man he would put him on the farm and buy some fowls. The next day Cace was told that he was to be moved into the city, and the move was made the same night. M’Dermott was driving, and also in the car were M’lntyre and Degnan. The latter had a revolver in his hand during the return journey to the city. Witness was taken to Degnan’s house in Botany, where, he alleged, he was again tied up by the leg. Sadie Goldman, continued Cace, was in the room when he was told to write the letters. Goldman told him he would have to write two letters, one to the Commissioner and one to Mr Abigail. She had brought him some fruit, and asked him how he was getting on. He told her he was better. She also asked him if he trusted her now, and he replied, “Yes.” Goldman then replied that she did not think he would go against her any more. I said, “No,” was Cace’s answer. “I said I will write a letter, and I will be good,” Cace went on. M’Dermott said ‘I will bring a J.P. and he will be a witness.’ A man came out and I wrote the letter. M’Dermott said ‘you will go to my house now and stop there till the appeal is finished.* I was taken in a car to Goldman’s place in Phillip Street. There M’Dermott said. ‘I will bring a solicitor here who works for Mr Abigail. He will write a statement for you, and. Mr Abignail will give you protection and none of the police can touch you.’ The solicitor wrote the! statement and I refused to sign it. The solicitor read the statement to me. It was against the police. I said ‘I do not want to sign no more letters. I am in the city now, and if you want to kill me you can kill me here, but I will sign no more.’ Then the solicitor wrote out another statement, but I would not it. I said “I don’t want to go against the police.” M’Dermott said ‘I think you are a bad man again, and you are going to work for the police. You know if I get £IOOO from Chuck, and Chuck does not pay, he will get kicked out of the police force’.” Mr Abigail: Did you mention anything about being killed to the solicitor ? Cace: No. Cace said that he asked M’Dermott if he could go for a walk. M’Dermott said he would send M’lntyre with him. Witness asked “Have I killed anyone that you have to send a man with me?” M’Dermott said “you are a good friend of M’lntyre.” “I told M’lntyre I wanted to collect some money from a man in George Street. I met the friend and spoke to him in English. 1 told my friend I wanted the police. I went back to Phillip Street, and in the afternoon saw two policemen there. I told the police tha\ M’Dermott and M’lntyre had hit me in the bush. “I left my friend in the arcade, but I saw him again at 5.30 the same day, when my friend was accompanied by two police.” Cace identified several articles produced, including a sweater, an umbrella, a gun, and a green pocket handkerchief. “Yes,” he said, “that is my handkerchief we had on Patrick’s Day in mj' pocket.” (Laughter.) Bail was granted defendants as follows: Degnan, self in £BO and one surety of £BO, or two of £4O: Hatch, same bail as Degnan; Goldman, self £l6O, one surety of £l6O, or two of £80; M’Dermott, self in £2OO and one surety of a like amount. Mr Rogers (for the Crown) again opposed the granting of bail for M’Dermott. If M’Dermott was free, he said, the police would have to find protection for Cace. M’Dermott had inter-' fered with a Crown witness since his arrest. He had endeavoured to get Degnan to retract a statement he had, made to the police. Cace had been; shadowed. “He goes in fear of his life now,” said counsel. Mr Perry, S.M., granted bail to M’Dermott. He complimented Detective Alford and Constable Chuck for the able manner in which they presented the case. “I concur,” said Mr Abigail. “I would like to have them in my office preparing my cases.”