Chapter nineteen
Police Work.
1964-1990
Two men with shotguns stole $300,000 from the Armourguard men as they carried out the takings from the supermarket. They drove off down Roseberry Avenue. A customer followed them but the robbers stopped their van and fired a shotgun blast in his direction. The young chap decided to give up the chase.
The robbers then continued down Roseberry Avenue and up Park Hill Road. They then crossed over Glenfield Road and went down McDowell Crescent. Here they traveled down a right-of-way into Monarch Park, where they abandoned the getaway van. They had hidden two motorcycles in the park and they transferred to these and left the scene.
The police contacted me on Labour Day and asked me if I would help a witness to recall a license plate number. I agreed and was introduced to a married woman of 22 years of age, who lived near the park. A few days earlier, she had become nervous when she had seen a car parked for quite some time near the entrance to the park. It didn't seem to have any good reason for being there. As her husband was away at the time, she was feeling vulnerable.
On her way out at 7-30pm, she was so nervous that she kept stalling her car engine. As she backed out, she ended up with her rear wheels on the footpath. When she drove forward, her headlights shone on the number plate, so she made an effort to remember it. Then her headlights shone on a man sitting in the passenger seat and he looked directly at her. Fear gripped her as she thought about it. Up the road she stopped and wrote down the number. Then she looked back and he was still looking at her. Was it because she kept stalling the car she wondered, or was it something more sinister? At her mother's place, she rang her neighbour and told him about the car. The neighbour said that the white car was still parked outside but it was probably nothing to worry about.
“Come into our place when you get home, if you're still uneasy.”
With that reassurance, she threw away the piece of paper with the number on it.
When we came to recall the number, with hypnosis, she kept confusing it with another car number. Two wee