CAR THIEVES MAKE DASH FOR LIBERTY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19268, 3 January 1931, Page 9

CAR THIEVES MAKE DASH FOR LIBERTY.

CONSTABLE IS NEARLY KILLED DURING FUGHT. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, November 18. Two men and a woman declared by a detective of great experience to belong to “ the most violent and unscrupulous group of criminals ” he had ever had to deal with were convicted and sentenced at the Old Bailey, London. When the trial opened before Sir Henry Dickens. K.C., the Common Serjeant, there were four persons in the dock:— Jack Elliott, aged thirty-one, salesman; Edward Vaughan, aged twentysix, engineer; Vera . Oldridge, aged tbirty-two, married woman and Beatrice Ross, aged 25, dressmaker. At the end of a long trial Mrs Oldridge was found not guilty and acquitted. The men were charged with stealing and receiving a motor-car and the attempted murder of two police officers, and the women with receiving stolen property. They air pleaded not guilty. Mr L. A. Byrne, prosecuting counsel, related first how a car belonging to a Mr Clutterbuck was stolen on the morning of September 8. That evening Detective-Sergeant Mann and Detective Perry saw the car unattended. They watched Vaughan and Elliott come from a restaurant and get into the car. The officers ran toward it, but the car started off, Detective Perry sprang on to one of the running-boards and Detective-Sergeant Mann on to the other. Mann shouted: “We are police officers,” but Elliott merely urged Vaughan, who was driving, to “ Go on, have a go.” Constable Nearly Run Down. Vaughan immediately accelerated, Elliott opened a window and struck Mann 3 violent blow on the chest, which caused him to lose his foothold. He held on with his hands, and managed to haul himself up again. At a street junction Constable Hannani, who was on point duty, saw what was happening, and shouted to the driver to stop, at the same time holding out his hand. Vaughan took no notice, but drove straight at the constable. Constabfe Ilannain jumped aside, or he would have been run down. As it was his knee was injured bv one of the wings. Had he been killed the prosecution submitted it would have been murder. Pedestrians screamed and jumped in all directions to avoid the car, which swerved and crashed violently into the back of a taxicab.

Detectives Mann and Perry were thrown into the road, but they seized Elliott, while Sergeant Bannester and Constable Hannani collared Vaughan. “ I hope I have not hurt you, Mr Mann,” remarked Elliott. “ I was not driving.” On September 19 Sergeant Mann went to a room where Vaughan and Oldridge had been Jiving. There he found a quantity of stolen property, and the woman handed the officer a large jemmy with the remark, “ I suppose you will want that?” She added,

“ I seem to be unlucky. Can I see Ted?” Vaughan remarked, "The girl knows nothing about it.” Attempted Murder Charge Reduced. Sergeant Mann went then to another address, where the girl Ross lived. “ I know what y r ou have come for,” she observed. “Who shopped me?” Property was found which had been left in a car belonging to a Mr Rankin, which had been stolen. There was also property \taken from two premises which had been broken into.

The Common Serjeant, at the conclusion of Mr Byrne’s opening, intimated that he did not think it could reasonably be inferred that the intention of the men in the car was to murder Mann and Hannani. He directed the charge to be reduced to one of assaulting the officers in the execution of their duty.

The defence was an ingenious one. Elliott denied that he had stolen the car. He saw it near a restaurant, and decided to borrow it to go to a dog racing meeting. He told Vaughan he had hired it, and got him to drive. He did not know the men who jumped on the car were officers, nor did he strike Sergeant Mann. Vaughan told the same story*, and denied that he tried to knock down IJannam. Verdict of the Jury. Elliott and Vaughan were found guilty of receiving the motor-car and not guilty of assaulting Constable Hannam. The jury disagreed with regard to the charge of assaulting Sergeant Mann. Ross was found guilty of receiving stolen property, but Oldridge was found not guilty' and discharged. Detective-Sergeant Mann stated that Elliott had a number of previous convictions for theft and fraud. While serving a sence in 1928 he was removed to an asylum, and from thence to C-ol-r>ey Hatch Mental Hospital and to Stone Asylum. At the latter place he was allowed out on parole, and absconded. Vaughan’s previous sentences included three years’ penal servitude in 1926 for theft, and eighteen months’ imprisonment with hard labour in 1928 for attempting to steal a motor-car. He was a very violent type of man. The Common Serjeant announced that he had received prison reports in which Elliott was described as most troublesome and refractory*. Vaughan, while iri prison, had made a serious attempt at suicide by* strangulation in his cell. The doctor had formed the opinion that both men were neither insane nor mentally deficient; in fact, mentally Elliott was above the average. Sergeant Mann, proceeding, declared that the men had been going about stealing cars in the suburbs and robbing shops. In one case a poor widow had her shop cleared right out. A Life of Dishonesty. The Common Serjeant described the careers of Elliott and Vaughan as thoroughly bad. They had become a nuisance and a danger to society. It was too late to be lenient with them, and they would each go to penal servitude for three years. Ross was a dangerous receiver, and would be sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment with hard labour. The judge warmly commended the officers in the Vaughan is the man who recently made a sensational attempt to break out of Brixton Prison while on remand. He was locked securely in his cell, but when warders went to see him later they found the door open and the man gone. In some mysterious way he had managed to obtain and secret a small hack-saw, with which he had cut oui the lock. He made his way to a washhouse, cut through a 3in iron window bar and squeezed through

By means of a rope or the stack-pipe he climbed down forty feet to the ground below. He had still to negotiate the twenty-feet prison wall, outside which, it is believed, accomplices were waiting with a motor-car. They failed to turn up. and, his escape having been discovered, an alarm was raised.

Vaughan was found by one of the patrols crouching in a shadow in the dead of night. He was overpowered after a struggle and taken to another cell.