Manhunt - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1878: Three Policemen Killed: The Kelly Gang's Deadly Ambush at Stringybark Creek

Four policemen searching for Ned Kelly and his gang had made camp at Stringybark Creek, near Mansfield, when the outlaws struck on 26 October 1878. Sergeant Michael Kennedy and Constable Michael Scanlan were away searching the bush when the gang surprised Constables Thomas Lonigan and Thomas McIntyre at the camp. Lonigan was shot dead after attempting to draw his revolver, while McIntyre surrendered and was held captive.

The gang then waited for the other two officers to return. As Kennedy and Scanlan rode into camp, they were ordered to surrender, but gunfire erupted and Scanlan was killed. McIntyre escaped on Kennedy's horse during the confusion, while Kennedy fought his way into the bush, pursued by the outlaws. He was eventually tracked down and killed. McIntyre reached Mansfield the following day to raise the alarm, the sole survivor of an encounter that left three policemen dead and helped turn the Kelly Gang into Australia's most notorious bushrangers.

The Capture of Ned Kelly, Julian Ashton, wood engraving, The Illustrated Australian News, 3 July 1880. State Library of Victoria. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Ambush Australia Bushranger Manhunt Murder Police VIC

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1884: He Helped Murder a Policeman, Then Willed His Estate to the Widow

Thomas Carbury and an accomplice, Andrew Miller, were arrested for drunkenness in a small Western Australian town, and Constable Patrick Hackett refused to return the new clothing found in their swag, worth about £20, until they explained how they had got it. Released that evening, the pair bludgeoned and stabbed him to death on 12 September 1884; the hammers used on him turned up cleaned but still blood-stained, quietly returned to the local blacksmith's shop.

Police hunted the two men for a week. Cornered in a shootout, Miller was fatally wounded and confessed with his dying breath that "both Carbury and myself killed him." Carbury fled but was soon tracked down and arrested, reportedly carrying a bottle of strychnine, as if hoping to cheat the gallows.

Awaiting execution in Perth, Carbury made a will leaving his savings, horses and stock of cut sandalwood entirely to Hackett's widow. He never once spoke his victim's name, calling him only "that man," and said he wanted everything he owned "to go to the benefit of the child of that man." He was hanged in Perth on this day in 1884, so overcome with terror that two constables had to carry him to the scaffold.

He had earlier acknowledged his guilt to the prison chaplain, though he never explained why he and Miller had killed Hackett.

Portrait of police Corporal Evan Williams Western Australia

⬅ See all events from 23 October

Australia Execution Manhunt Murder Perth Police WA

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1818: A Dream Diary Written in Kangaroo Blood: the Death of Bushranger Michael Howe

Michael Howe styled himself the Governor of the Ranges and spent years terrorising colonial Tasmania at the head of a bushranging gang, turning on his own allies whenever it suited his hold on command. When two kangaroo hunters, Worrall and Pugh, finally cornered and killed him on 21 October 1818, his knapsack was found to hold a crude journal bound in kangaroo skin and written in kangaroo blood.

The little book revealed a man haunted by his own crimes: dreams of being murdered, of dead comrades, of narrowly escaping capture, and, in one unexpected line, of the sister he had left behind. Alongside the dreams were long lists of seeds and flowers, the quiet fantasy of a killer who always meant to vanish into the bush and farm it in peace. Howe never got the chance; after Pugh clubbed him to death, his head was carried to Hobart to claim the reward on his life.

The reign of terror by the king of the ranges newspaper article 1954

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Australia Bushranger Colonial Crime Gang Manhunt Murder Tasmania

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1960: Caught by a Picnic Blanket: Australia's First Kidnap-for-Ransom Killer Arrested at Colombo

Eight-year-old Graeme Thorne was snatched walking to school in Sydney in 1960, just a day after his family’s lottery win made headlines. Six weeks later his body was found wrapped in a tartan picnic blanket on vacant land at Seaforth, still in his school uniform, gagged and bound with string.

Forensic scientists traced the blanket to one of only 3,000 ever woven at an Onkaparinga mill, then matched rare tree pollen and pink mortar scraped from the body to a single property at Clontarf, once home to a blue Ford, a Pekingese dog and a blonde-haired wife. By the time police reached the house, its occupant, Hungarian migrant Stephen Bradley, had already sailed for London with his family aboard the SS Himalaya. Two Sydney detectives were waiting for him when the ship docked at Colombo, and he was brought back to face extradition and trial.

Forensic hair evidence collected at crime scene

⬅ See all events from 10 October

Australia Colombo Extradition Forensic Science Kidnapping Manhunt Murder NSW Sri Lanka Sydney

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