The ambitious bank robber - Grave story #32

Oswald Laurence Coulton lived a short life, dying before the age of 30 when he was shot trying to rob a Remuera bank.
But was he also guilty of murder?
Coulton was born in 1909 in Tamworth, New South Wales, to a reasonably well-off family - but even with his financial advantages he wasn’t happy.
He had delusions of fame, particularly as a writer or an airman. He started training to be a pilot, but his family had been unable to continue to pay for the lessons.
Then he ended up in prison in 1929 for forgery and uttering (actually using the forgery), serving two years. After his release he came to New Zealand.
For 14 months in 1930 and 31 Coulton worked on a Papakura farm. He was also a member of the Papakura League football team, but by the time of the bank robbery in November 1931 he was unemployed.
But Coulton had not given up his dreams of fame - he wrote a letter to the New Zealand Press Association in January saying he proposed an attempt to beat the record flight time between England and New Zealand and was trying to raise £2000 to do it.
Then on November 25, 1931, out of nowhere, Coulton walked into the Remuera branch of the Bank of New Zealand and presented the manager Fred Youngs with a note - he wanted £250 to go to another account. The note gave a fake name and address.
When Mr Youngs bent over to read the letter, Coulton hit him with a sandbag in which there was a fire brush.
But Mr Youngs was a stalwart chap, he grabbed a loaded revolver and yelled "Stop Thief". Youngs had been a sniper during WWI - exactly the type of man Coulton did not want to encounter.
Coulton ran but Mr Youngs was quicker, he shot Coulton in the back. Coulton died shortly after.
Police searching Coulton’s home found a fake airman’s certificate. They also discovered he had been trying to get a film script, entitled Scotland Yard and the Underworld, accepted for production - ironically it was about a bank robbery.
But what prompted him to actually try a bank robbery is unknown.
The search of his room also uncovered a motor jack. It was just the type of weapon police had been looking for in the murder of chemist Arthur Blomfield, who had been found bludgeoned to death behind his Auckland shop a month before.
The find saw Coulton become a prime suspect in his murder.
A witness, who saw a man believed to be the murderer, in a nearby fish and chip shop before Blomfield's killing, could not positively identify Coulton.
But nothing ever came of it, there was not enough evidence to connect Coulton to the crime.
Coulton was buried in the Papakura Cemetery while Mr Youngs is in Waikumete.
The murder of Arthur Blomfield has never been solved.