BRUTAL CRIMINAL GETS FIVE YEARS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 143, 18 June 1931, Page 9

BRUTAL CRIMINAL GETS FIVE YEARS.

ATTACKED OLD COUPLE AND STOLE £BOOO. Per Press Association. DUNEDIN, June 18. In the Supreme Court TLomas William Wilson and Rupert Saunders were sentenced this morning by Mr Justice Kennedy. Wilson was sentenced on charges of breaking, entering, and theft from the Hudson Fur Company of £SOO, from R. S. Black of £450, from Dawson and Company of jewellery worth £3OOO, and from W. J. Paterson of jewellery worth £B4l. He was also found guilty of assaulting Walter G. Rossiter and doing grievous bodily harm to Jane Rossiter. He was given five years* imprisonment witth one year’s reformative detention thereafter. Saunders received a sentence of three years’ reformative detention fo rassaulting Rossiter with intent to rob, the Judge remarking that following drunken bouts he fell in with Wilson’s suggestions, and his crime was not attended with brutality. The Judge, after reviewing Wilson’s Australian convictions, said that he regarded him as a callous, brutal, and dangerous criminal. Within six months he had stolen goods valued at £4191, and jewellery worth £3BOO was still unrecovered, the proceeds of which he most likely hoped to enjoy when released. His cruel and brutal assault on ail old man and his wife merited exemplary punishment.