CONVICT'S SECRET.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1919, Page 10

CONVICT'S SECRET.

KEPT IT FROM MOTHER FOR TWENTY YEARS. For. twenty years Martin Sweeney hid from his old mother the fact that lie was a life-term convict in Sing Sing prison. But mother love would not be denied the truth. An advertisement that was a blind trapped Sweeney and forced liim to tell the truth. Again mother love asserted itself. The aged woman enlisted sympathy for her son. The Salvation Army helped, Governor Smith signed a pardon, and to-day Sweeney is a free man. Sweeney was one of the most famous jockeys on the- Pacific Coast thirtyfive years ago. He gained fame, and' made considerable money, and then decided to try his fortune in New York. He came to New York and rode on local tracks during the summer of 1898. In the winter of that same yera he drifted around Broadway and the Tenderloin, finally bringing jip on the lower east side, where he became a pal and a crony of Abo Coakley, a noted cracksman and gangster of that day. Sweeney never got into any particular mischief until the night of December 12, 1898, when he went into a west side hotel and asked the night clerk, James Holerow, for a room. Holcrow replied that the hotel was full. After an argument, Sweeney drew his revolver and killed the clerk. He was arrested a few minutse later by Chief of Police Devery, who found him standing over the body of the murdered man with ft pistol in one hand. He was convicted of second degree murder, and given a life sentence in Sing Sing prison. The day before he wont to prison Sweeney wrote to his mother. He wrote the sort of letter he had always written, telling her nothing of the crime ot the fact that he was to pass the rest of his I life behind prison bars. But he did tell her that on account of the pressure of work and other circumstances it might be a long time before he wrote to her again. Then he was taken to Sing Sing, and for more than eighteen years no word reached his mother or any of his other relatives..

Meanwhile they had been inquiring and searching for him, but without success. Only a few of the former jockey's old fiiends knew what had become of him, and they had promised Sweeney to keep' quiet about it. Finally his sister hit upon the plan of putting an advertisement in a newspaper stating that Sweeney's mother was dead, and had left the jockey a fortune, and asking Sweeney to write to a firm of lawyers. Thinking his mother was dead, and the necessity for keeping his whereabouts secret no longer existed, Sweeney answered the advertisement. But in reply he leceived a letter from his sister. She told him that the advertisement a blind to get him to anSwer and tell them where ho was, and that his mother was alive and Wanted to know why he was writing letters from Sing Sing prison. Sweeney then wrote to his mother and his sister and told them the whole story. The mother at once went to her son's old racing partner and his other friends of the old days on the tracks, and through them interested the Salvation Army In SWseney's case.