EXTRAORDINARY CAREER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 80, 30 April 1909, Page 4

EXTRAORDINARY CAREER

HUNTED FOR 10 YEARS.

ONCE IN AUCKLAND GAOL,

i llie remarkable improbability I amounting to almost, positive iutilitv, j of criminate' who are really badly Hauled, completely escaping being Drought to justice is admirably exemplified ill •the career of crime of .UcLaugnlin, who was arrested last week in Queensland, charged with a crime committed ill Atrica nearly twenty vi-ars ago (savs the Auckland Star). -McLaughlin is a one-handed man, whose speciality was dynamiting .safes', and it we.s in conducting one oi these operatioiKi that he lost his hand. Kaily in the '•nineties" he was seiHened to a term of imprisonment, and, attributing his conviction to the evidence of a man named Stevenson, he said when he was being tajien away, "When f come out a «UI sctu are accounts with you, Steve." The threat w.is regarded as "one of those which tare not inireuuently heard in a criiniija 1 Court, but are very seldom carrii'd out. However, when the naleexjiiuiliug expert came out, he made a bee-liufe lor Stevenson's house, knocked at the door, which was opened by Slevviiso% whom .Mclaughlin thereupon siiot (U-ad. Over a fence and away went the crJiuitnal, but the deed had been witnessed, h;.' a Cape black, who made an cil'ort t'> st op him. Hut the dark skin, too, was drilled with a bullet, and the murderer got. away. .South Africa was scoured, ami' a reward of CiUO was offered, but the notorious Mcl.aaghlan was heard of «to more for years. (,Miite a surprising uuinber of men were arrested on suspicion of being the wanted, hunted man. T here is in Auckland at the present tinu _• a man who was in the police scr>i i • in .South Africa at Hie time of the e> o uuittal of the crime, and this man was among those who searched for th" ]K'.' -pelrator. While perusing a New '/.t aland paper one day, this ollirer notii eil an aecuunl of a mysterious man, v* lo had been arrested ill Auckland and sentenced to four mouths' imprisonment. The man hail been seen prowling about the cemetery, and the police had found in a bag he had secreted there an artificial hand and some " cracksman's " implements. The officer guessed at once that this was .McLaughlin, and he applied for the reward, and gave tie. 1 infor- ' million. At that time Dutch "dc preJ vailed in that portion of Afi"' ■. ' ! t lie information was an exlraord::..:r long time in reaching Xew Zealand. When it did come McLaughlin was out of jraol and far away. He was never heard of again until last week, when he was identified in Queensland and arrested. The cable stated that the man taken into custody admits that he is McLaughlan, bill protests that he is innocent of the crimes. The notorious i-liarael.ei' must now lie about sixty years of age.