CHARGED with having demanded £500 by threats from Donald Speed, of Bruce st, Toorak, manager of Autoterms Ltd, Alan Howard Lannin, 21, farmer, of Lillimur, admitted in General Sessions yesterday that he had sent the letters because he considered Speed had treated him unfairly.
Lannin added that he had had no intention of harming Speed. He believed that Speed owed him £500.
The letters contained threats that if Speed did not pay he would be "a dead pigeon," and that "certain items of interest" regarding Speed's wife would be disclosed.
For the Crown it was alleged that the accused had sent the letters soon after Autoterms had refused to repay any part of the £250 deposit on a motor truck he had bought for £795, and which he had returned when he had failed to get tyres to keep it on the road.
Lannin said he borrowed £300 from a cousin to start in the transport business. When he bought the truck and trailer he paid £250 deposit. Twelve tyres were "shockingly perished," and he asked for others. Six changes were promised, but only two were replaced.
On his first trip to Port Fairy repairs cost him £15, and on returning to the city the truck broke down again, and repairs cost him £32/18/. The first of three trips to Sydney cost him £45 for secondhand tyres to replace blow-outs. There were two blow-outs on the second trip, as well as mechanical repairs, and a new radiator was necessary. The cost of those repairs was £67. Another trip cost £40 after five blow-outs.
He was behind with his hire purchase payments of £37 a month, and could get no help from Speed or obtain tyres necessary to keep going. In June Speed said he would sell the truck for him. Speed told him he would get money back, but not all his deposit.
In evidence Speed said that Lannin surrendered any right to a return of his money when he signed a voluntary surrender form.
Cross-examined, Speed said he did not explain to Lannin that in signing the surrender form he was renouncing all claims against Autoterms, or that, if the truck was repossessed by the company, he would get something back under the Hire Purchase Act.
The hearing is unfinished.
Source: Trove The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) Tuesday 16 December 1947 Page 6