Choirboy Sentenced To Hang

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30687, 1 March 1965, Page 13

Choirboy Sentenced To Hang

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) PERTH, Feb. 28. Tom Tran him, the 16-y ear-old choirboy convicted of murder, asked police officers who arrested him: “They don’t hang little boys, do they?” “Tiny Tom” is waiting in death row at Fremantle Gaol near Perth for the West Australian Government to decide whether he will hang. A jury of 11 men and a woman last week found the slight, sft boy guilty of murdering his employer's wife, Mrs Mavis Davey, last December. The jurors recommended mercy because of the boy’s age. Mr Justice Hale sentenced Trantum to death by hanging.

Almost immediately Mr David Brand, Premier of Western Australia, announced that the State Cabinet would consider the case for possible commutation of the death sentence to a prison term.

Western Australia is one of the three Australian states which retain the death penalty. Trantum’s mother and three sisters live in an old house in a Perth back street. His father died when he was small. His mother married again. Trantum became a ward of the state and has spent most of his life in orphanages and institutions.

He loved singing, and was a member of a championship choir. His teachers remember him as a cheerful boy who needed supervision. Seven months ago, the Child Welfare Department sent Trantum to work for Mr Walter Davey, aged 48, and his wife Mavis, aged 45, on

their poultry farm and orchard 20 miles from Perth.

The Daveys had two grownup children of their own. A son, Fred, died when he was eight. Tom Trantum was about the same age Fred would have been.

“I guess I wanted to make Tom a sort of replacement,” Mr Davey said in an interview. “We were mates, Tom and I. We tried to give him a real home. “He had my son’s former room and ate all his meals with us,” Mr Davey said. “He worked hard and loved to be with the poultry. It was Tom’s dream to save up his money and buy a poultry farm of his own.” Mr Davey said he did not know why Tom Trantum killed his wife, unless it was because they had discussed selling their farm. The boy said in a statement that she “treated him badly.” “Tom must have feared he would lose hjs job, which he

really loved,” Mr Davey said. “He must have imagined that he could kill my wife, ask for forgiveness, then live happily ever afterwards with me on the farm.

“I know this sounds crazy, but Tom had this sort of mind,” Mr Davey said.

Trantum waited for Mrs Davey when she returned from shopping last December 7. Mr Davey was away fishing. Trantum shot Mrs Davey in the face as she came through the door of the farmhouse kitchen, it was said at his trial.

She fell, and he loaded and reloaded the single action rifle and shot her twice more in the back of the head.

Mr Davey said: “I don't want Tom to hang. I feel sorry for him. “He’s lost as much as we have, for Tom has lost his life. He is case-hardened, institutionalised and can never be free again.”