Gangland Robbers by James Morton Read Free Book Online Page B

work of a recently released criminal and there was a call for such men to be required to notify the police of any change of address. Finally, it was thought that a woman had been involved. In the corner of Bauer’s room a lady’s black glove was found. Had an earlier visitor dropped it or had a woman been used as a decoy? In any case, no one was ever charged .
    History often repeats itself. At about 5 p.m. on 18 March 1978 three diamond dealers were found shot in the back of the head in the Manchester Unity Building on the corner of Collins and Swanston Streets. The killers had arranged to see $30 000 worth of diamonds. Newspapers described the crime as ‘unprecedented in Australia’; the diamonds would have fetched around $9000 on the black market, or their full value if taken to Europe. It was thought the robbery had been carried out by an interstate gang. No charges were ever brought .

Sailing Away
3
    In 1877, a quarter of a century after the
Nelson
robbery, 5000 gold sovereigns in three sealed boxes were sent on P & O steamer the 1502-tonne
Avoca
from Sydney’s Darling Harbour to Melbourne. Bank officials supervised their transfer to the RMS
China
, on which they would be taken to Galle in what was then Ceylon. On the
Avoca
, only the English-born chief officer, Robert Elliston, held a key to the strongroom on the lower deck, which could only be reached through a hatch directly opposite Elliston’s cabin.
    The journey took just under three weeks and when, on 29 August, the vessel arrived in Galle, the boxes were opened, again in the presence of bank officials, and the seals were broken. All that was in the boxes was sawdust.
    As the man with the key and the cabin opposite the entrance to the strongroom on the
Avoca
, Elliston was the principal suspect. However, he convinced the police, who were sure the coins had disappeared between Sydney and Melbourne, that he knew nothing about the disappearance of the gold sovereigns. All other members of the crew, from Captain Pockley to the ship’s carpenter Martin Weiberg, were interrogated but they answered all questions satisfactorily. Elliston was given a leave of absence and returned to England. And there the matter lapsed. Some months later, Weiberg told his mates he was leaving the ship, marry ing a barmaid and going to live on a property on the Tarwin River in South Gippsland. And the crime would have remained unsolved except that Weiberg’s in-laws moved in with him and his new wife.
    In the spring of 1878, while cutting up metre-long bars of soap, his sister-in-law Emma found cloth in a bar that had been hollowed out, pulled at it and out came shiny gold sovereigns. She showed her find to her mother, who told her daughter to take it to the police. Initially, in a version of the stock defence to a receiving charge, the ‘I met a man in a hotel’ story, Weiberg told the officers he had been given a parcel by a bearded stranger on the ship, who had told him, ‘Here is a present for you. Keep your mouth shut’.
    When more coins were found in a search of the property on 25 October 1878, Weiberg made a complete confession, implicating Elliston who, he said, during a particularly rough part of the voyage to Melbourne had got him to cut into the strongroom and open the boxes. For his troubles, Elliston gave him £200. What he forgot to tell the police was that as the ship’s carpenter with the full run of the vessel, he had spent months on board amusing himself by making a series of secret doors, hatches and passageways which had enabled him to break into the strongroom on his own. He offered to take the police to a spot where he had hidden more gold for Elliston, claiming he had placed the coins in a kettle that he had lowered into the Tarwin River. He suggested that he and a policeman take a boat out and, when they were afloat, Weiberg hit the policeman and was off.
    Meanwhile, in London in January 1879, Elliston had appeared