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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

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Australia Bathurst Bushranging Execution Gang NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

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1989: The Granny Killer Survivor Whose Broken Memory Sent Police the Wrong Way

John Wayne Glover, later known as the Granny Killer, followed 86-year-old Doris Cox along Spit Road in Sydney‘s Mosman to her retirement village in 1989, then dragged her into a secluded stairwell and smashed her face into a brick wall.

Cox survived, one of the few to live through an attack that would later be linked to a string of killings targeting elderly women. But she had Alzheimer’s, and her account of the assault was so confused that detectives were steered toward hunting a much younger suspect, a misdirection that bought Glover more time before he was finally caught.

In memory note on paper held in wrinkled hands under dramatic light

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Assault Australia Cold Case Mosman NSW Police Serial Killer Sydney

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1794: The First Free Settler Murdered in the Colony: Hanged at Sydney for a Parramatta Stabbing

John Hill, a butcher, had spent the day drinking with Simon Burn at Parramatta on 5 October 1794 when he turned on the woman he lived with, beating her until Burn stepped in to stop him. Hill stabbed Burn through the heart; dying within the hour, Burn had just enough strength left to name his killer before witnesses, declaring that the butcher had done it. Burn, a First Fleet convict who had earned his freedom and settled his own farm, was reportedly the first free man in the colony to be murdered by another colonist.

Hill tried to set up an alibi at his trial, but the wound and Burn’s own dying words undid him. He was hanged at Sydney on 16 October 1794, his body handed over for dissection as his sentence required.

Bloody Halloween killer dressed as butcher on dark blue background

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Australia Colonial Crime Execution Murder NSW Parramatta Sydney Trial

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1826: The Gun That Misfired Twice: Three Bushrangers Hanged Outside Sydney

At a settler’s hut near Burwood, outside Sydney, bushranger Thomas Mustin levelled a loaded musket point-blank at a visiting neighbour, and pulled the trigger. It merely flashed in the pan; he drew a pistol, and that misfired too, and in the scuffle that followed Mustin and his companions escaped briefly into the bush.

Mustin, Daniel Watkins and John Brown were convicted over this attack and a string of armed robberies around Burwood and the Liverpool Road, including one household where the terrified wife recognised Brown as a former constable but was too afraid to say so.

On 16 October 1826 the three were marched from Sydney Gaol under military escort. All three acknowledged the justice of their sentence on the scaffold and prayed for mercy, offering no claim of innocence. They hanged together on a temporary gallows at Burwood, and their bodies were left on display throughout the day.

Bushrangers holding up coach passengers illustrated scene

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Australia Bushranging Execution NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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