A Convict Hunt.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 245, 21 August 1902, Page 3

A Convict Hunt.

The cable a few days ago recorded the death by suicide of an American convict named Tracy, who had eluded his pursuers during a chase extending over 400 miles, in the course of which he committed several murders. Tracy, it appears, broke out of gaol, and the chase began only after he had had two desperate fights with the police and had killed several of them as he fought his way thiough. For some time be seem? to have lived by raiding the settlers in the neighbourhood of Seattle. On one occasion he watched a rancher’s house for an hour to ascertain how many men there were in it; then entered and announced that he had intended to kill everyone on the place, but added, “ After seeing your pretty little girl I will kill no one if you all mind me. I will be here all day.” He made the family prepare breakfast for him, and sit down with him while he ate. Later on he forced them to give him a bundle of clothes and six days’ supplies, and then binding and gagging everyone in the house, Kte compelled their farm servant to row him across the Sound. Two days later a posse of fifty determined police officers surrounded Tracy in a house. They made sure that they bad caught him, bat Tracy was too clever for them, and when they closed in on the house they found only the rightful occupant tied to a tree at the back. The convict left the house ten minutes previously, while the pursuers were taking up strong positions round it, had hidden for a time in some bushes, and then slipped quietly into the woods. The officers had come provided with bloodhounds, and these animals were quickly brought up and put on a hot scent, but they had not gone far before they stopped. Tracy had been two crafty again, and the cayenne pepper ha had sprinkled in : his footsteps effectually baffled the hounds. He appears after this to have continued to evade his wouldbe captors for more than a month, and then when the hunt became too vigorous or possibly because he ceccognised that in the end he must be caught, he gave the police the slip altogether by taking his own life a tragic end to a tragic incident.