MARTON SENSATION.

Wairarapa Age, 6 July 1932, Page 5

MARTON SENSATION.

EXPLOSIVE PLACED IN BUS. PRISONER’S DENIAL. WELLINGTON, July 5. Although he had pleaded guilty at Marton to charges of wilfully placing an explosive substance in a bus and being knowingly in possession of a bomb, with intent to commit a crime, Charles William Hoffman, aged 65, denied the offences when he appeared before Mr. Justice Blair in the Supreme Court to-day for sentence. Reformative detention for a period of three years was ordered.

Counsel said that Hoffman’s previous character had been unblemished. He bad been carrying on a bus service between Marton and Palmerston North, and after the dismissal of the driver had taken on the driving himself. A rival service was then established by the former driver, and from that time onwards the rivalry developed into hatred on Hoffman’s part. The rival’s licence had been renewed while Hoffman had been unable to renew his and had appealed unsuccessfully. The obsession became overwhelming, and, to a certain extent, his mind was affected, leading him to commit the offences.

Speaking from the dock, the prisoner asserted that he had never placed any explosives in the bus and was fully a mile and a half from the scene of the explosion when it occurred. He could not understand how the explosives came to be in the shed where he Was working. He had told the police at Marton that he was being brought to Wellington an innocent man. He knew of two men who had expressed their intention of destroying the bus and he had had an uphill fight trying to dissuade them. His Honour said that as far as he was concerned the prisoner had pleaded •guilty. The placing of gelignite in the bus involved not only the damage to the vehicle itself, but the explosion might well have happened when people were passing and a large number might have been injured. There were mental aspects in the case which made it explainable, and he would frame the sentence so that the matter could be reviewed from time to time by the Prisons Board.—(P.A.)