TRAGIC END.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 67, 21 March 1938, Page 9

TRAGIC END.

CRIMINAL UFE. UNDERWORLD SHOOTING. BUBFBCT IS ARRESTED. ~ J (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, March IS. It was announced this week by the police authorities, with apparent .satisfaction, that one Miles McKeon, popularly known as "Face"' McKeon, had been arrested and charged with the murder of Harold Tarlington, at Xewtown, on February 17. McKeon is 24 years old, and is described as a motor driver. Tarlington was only 30 years old. but hie career a* recorded in. our police annals had been sufficiently sensational to justify almost any conceivable end. First Appearance. Harold Tarlington was born at Marrichville, one of Sydney's industrial suburbs, in 1908. He was therefore 12 years old when, in 1920, he first came before the Children's Court charged with stealing. He was put on probation for six months in the custody of his mother. About a year later he came before the same Court on another charge of theft, and this time he was put on probation for 12 months in the custody of his father. Four months later, howe«"er, he was again "up" on a. similar charge, and he was sent off to Mittagong State Farm, where "first delinquents" were then consigned. Hie relations appealed to the authorities to give him a chance, and he was released. The same year he was back before the Ourt for stealing. They gave him probation again, and three months later. <■■ a further charge, they put him into hie father's custody once more. By this time it was becoming evident that neither parental discipline nor the "reformative" effects ascribed to State farms and similar institutions made much difference to young Tarlington but what else were thev to do with the boy.

When, two months later, he a«ain "came up," the Court, losing all patience, sent him back to Mittagong. He absconded, but being arrested two months later riding a stolen bicycle, he was committed to the State Farm at Gosford, where "really bad*' hove were sent to be improved. Apparently he did not like Gosford much, and he had little difficulty in escaping. He was now 16, and if his moral code had not improved much, he was learning to keep out of harm's way. The police saw nothing of him for 16 months, and then, caught stealing again, he was sent back to Gosford, but only in a perfunctory way, because his release would come automatically with his 18th year. Pathetic Appeal The record shows that Tarlington made a further attempt to avoid trouble for quite a considerable, period, for it was not till 1928, when he was 20 years old, tha-t he was convicted in theßalmain Court and sentenced to three months for stealing. But he made a pathetic appeal to the magistrate, and the authorities, who eeem to have shown the most remarkable forbearance towards him, placed him on a personal 12-month bond of good conduct. Four months later he received a sentence for stealing at the North Sydney Police Court. When he got out, be was still "without visible means of support," and the police tried to get a conviction against him for vagrancy. They failed. In September, 1929, when he was 21 years old, Tarlington with a "cobber" bailed up a Chinese and robbed him at revolver point. They got "three years' hard," but—curious commentary on the elastic character of their sentences—he was "out" and before the Court again for stealing in March, 1932. Later in 1932. after his three months had expired, he was charged with receiving stolen goods, and was sen-y tenced to 12 months' imprisonment, but he appealed and —his appeal was upheld! (The record makes no attempt to explain why.) | For the next 18 months he was rather lucky—two rOirirt sentences and two fines, always for stealing, making up his ' "ecore." But by the middle of 1934, the blow fell. He was only 26 years «ld. but the magistrates had got tired of imposing short sentences, and in July, 1934, he was formally enrolled as "habitual" and condemned to an "indeterminate"' sentence. Listened to Plea. No doubt he would have been safer in gaol, but his friends and relations outside agitated constantly for hie release —the authorities listened to the plea for mercy, as they so often listen—and last November, in spite of the "indeterminate" sentence, lie was free once more. To-day, he is dead. The end came very much as might have been anticipated. On the night of February 17. men and women were quarrelling fiercely in a house in St. Peters, a suburb near Alexandria, where wae Tarlington'e home. There were shouts and execrations, the crashing of crockery and the smashing of furniture. No one interfered, became these things often happen in certain suburbs. Then came the report of a gun, a door opened and Tarlington staggered out holding hi« hand on his side. When the police got there the men who had taken part in the fracae had disappeared, and the women—one of whom dieplaved two black eyes and other signs" of conflict—maintained stolidly that thev could not remember exactly what had happened, and they did not know how Tarlington—m the words of a «n-ea* humorist—"became shot." " The police took Tarlington to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, not far away, but lie had no chance of recoverv A magistrate went up there to take his dying depositions, but Tarlington refused to squeal. • He did not want the police to take any action, he said, and he would W %° ehot Mm eve » if lle knew. xtv , Police know - about MCJieons alleged connection with thie 1 tragic "shooting-up," they certain!v did 1 not learn from the victim