Bathurst - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1826: The Informer Who Refused to Kill: Two Bushrangers Hanged Near Sydney

Patrick Sullivan and James Moran led a gang of bushrangers who terrorised the Bathurst district through 1826, raiding stations and homes for firearms, horses and supplies. When Sullivan ordered a gang member to murder a stockman in cold blood, the man balked, slipped away in the dark and turned himself in, giving evidence that broke the gang apart.

Tried before the Sydney Criminal Court, Sullivan and Moran pleaded guilty to burglary and horse theft and were sentenced to death. They were hanged at Irish Town on the Liverpool Road, near present-day Bankstown, on 18 October 1826, two days after their accomplices were. Their bodies were left suspended for the rest of the day as a warning to others.

Bushrangers flight scene from 1856 illustration

⬅ See all events from 18 October

Australia Bathurst Bushranging Execution Gang NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

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1826: Sullivan Gang Bushrangers Hanged Near Parramatta, One Sobbing to the Last

Matthew Craven and Thomas Cavanagh rode with a bushranging gang led by Patrick Sullivan that terrorised stations around Bathurst for half a year, robbing homesteads, stealing horses and holding settlers at gunpoint. Captured after a shootout at a bark hut, the pair pleaded guilty at trial to burglary and theft and were sentenced to hang.

On 16 October 1826 they left Sydney Gaol with three other condemned men bound for Burwood, where they were hanged before a large crowd that morning. Straight afterwards, the two men, Craven and Cavanagh travelled further on on to the Western Road near Parramatta, arriving about noon to face their own gallows.

Witnesses said their contrition was conspicuous; Craven, described as barely twenty, reportedly hung his head and sobbed bitterly as the ropes were fitted.

Bushrangers in action: Water colour drawing created by George Lacy 1867

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Australia Bathurst Burwood Bushranging Execution Gang NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

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1865: Australia’s Only Chinese Bushranger: Convicted of Murdering a Constable Without Understanding His Own Trial

Sam Poo was an itinerant Chinese bushranger who spent ten days terrorising stockmen and settlers near Talbragar before shooting Senior Constable John Ward in February 1865. Tried at Bathurst that October, Poo took no part in his own defence; the court’s Chinese interpreter could not understand his dialect, and he sat through the entire proceedings in silence while witnesses and the dying constable’s own written statement were read against him.

The jury convicted him largely on that statement, in which Ward, certain he was dying, described being chased and shot by a “short, little, cranky old man” armed with a gun and pistol. The judge, visibly moved as he spoke the final words of the sentence, ordered Poo hanged, calling him a man who had terrified unarmed men, women and children before the killing.

⬅ See all events from 10 October

Australia Bathurst Crime Against Police Execution Murder NSW Trial

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1852: Timothy Sullivan Cried “Robbers, Robbers” While Beating an Old Shepherd to Death

Timothy Sullivan lived with an elderly shepherd named Daniel Harrington at King’s Plains, near Carcoar in the Bathurst district. On the night of 4 June 1852, neighbours were woken by Sullivan himself shouting “robbers, robbers” from his hut. When a neighbour, Daniel Healy, ran to help, he found no robber, only Sullivan raining blows on the old man with a heavy weapon he then hurled onto the roof. Harrington, barely alive, managed to whisper his own name before he died.

At the Bathurst Assizes the judge dismissed the robbery story as invention, noting that nothing had actually been stolen and that the wounds showed deliberate, prolonged violence. Convicted of wilful murder, Sullivan was hanged on 30 September 1852; the drop was so severe it very nearly tore his head from his body.

On the scaffold a priest read a statement on Sullivan’s behalf: he claimed he had rushed out in the dark with a flesh fork believing a robber was near, striking blindly, and insisted “he did not know it was Harrington he was wounding.”

⬅ See all events from 30 September

Australia Bathurst Carcoar Execution Murder NSW Trial

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