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wot pba " aa BY Zon taxctone and TED PEARSON | News star writers | = At 17, when other boys his fown age were obsessed with am shafts and four-barreled E-carbureiors, he openly boast- red he could take “rubber bands and a little wire’ and Convert an M-l carbine inte a fully automatic weapon. 2 “Damn Jews, I’m going to Skill them,’ he was fond of £ saying. And among those he Fe said it to were police infor- ae mants both here and in ¥. Mobile, because long before =Thomas <A. Tarrants If “reached adulthood he was already being watched and shadowed by both metropoll- j tan police in Alabama and the; FEA. t This is the picture that4 es eee, yd 7 “emerged today of the 22-year old Mohile man Who was i aly Sunday as - attempted {fo dyTamile the ¥ man and Jewish leader: Meyer fe Davidson, P Today, he les E “wourced in a Meridian hospi- + tal, shot down by police bul- | “Sets after a suspected bomb & piot went awry and “fed his awn wrecked automo- * tile where a girl companion. : lay dead of ville shols. FARRANTS 18 ehovies ipl a otan me yh e ey ore gunned down in Meridian ear- j he . allegedly home of Meridian business- | serivusly as he ¢: CD Guilty or innocent, ne bullets are nothing new to Tarrants. He was obsessed with them! He began coming to Birm- ingham long before his 20th birthday, usually Staying at . the headquarters of the radi- eal National States Rights.. Party here out on Bessemer ' Road. The party has since " moved its main operations to Augusta, Ga. | And during his visits here, ; with word of his rock hard } attitudes and his love for guns already commonplace, police shadowed his every move. : Unknown to Tarrants, was frequently flanked by police informants. ~ The troubles of both the South and the nation, he frequently claimed, jay in the NG: om mu nist- Jewish” cof pow Sorat pee eet B tee From time to. time, he showed up with picket signs in { front of Jewish stores : Mobile. He made periodic trips back here between 1963 ments carefully observed by local police and, » by. 1965, the °° In} : Tobie, his ‘home town, it “aul began ga at 17 When ne was” Pplek@d ous in. Cay wit Robert (Bob! baith, leaded 5 the NSH? Hades in the aut a" ‘ ‘bras FA sate ef shdiaua, tb Vo it a i Bi i artelnd cs ae 4 tr known to he : in}. - and 1965, each time his move- |: TOTO to gu pros as . _ “Bluegrass.”* . He was charged ‘under fed- ‘eral laws regulating such ° ‘ weapons and pleaded not guil- . ty before Federal Judge Dan-. ‘jel Thomas in Mobile on Oct. 2, 1964, Tarrants later changed his {plea to guilty and was placed . ' on probation for a period ‘not / , exceeding his = miajority,”” ‘which means that he was ~ clear on his 21st birthday. So just a few days after the ail important birthday, he was found in a car with notorious segregationist leader Sam_ Bowers of Mississippi. Inside the car was “a submachine gun, the same type of weapon ' allegedly used in Sunday's fearly- hours shootout at Meridian. i ’ For gun lover Tarrants, the {3 oad hag led not unexpectedly \ © deep trouble. 7") 2 on Sunday, he was charged. ‘ for attempted murder as’ he writhed in pain on a hospital _ bed, badly wounded. "3 Monday, a grand jury in: Hinds County, Miss., indicted — him for the $48, 000° armed - robbery of ‘a grocery store ‘last May. Armed robbery in = Missi ssippi {Indicate page, name of is a’ capital nj ! aay A newspaper, city and state.) 2. THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS — BIRMINGHAM Pos?- HERALD BIRMINGTAM, Date: 7-2-68 Edition: Metro , Lankford&Pearson _Jghn W. Bloomer Character: or Classifiations §7-352-$/7- _RIRMINGHAM Submitting Office: