Four masked men broke into a farmhouse outside Sydney on the night of 30 September 1816, and when John Miller rose from his fireside chair a musket went off, killing him in front of his wife and four children.
One of the raiders, Colin Hunter, turned on his companion moments later outside the house, snarling that “that murdering villain” Thomas Dooley had shot the man. But when the guns were examined, it was Hunter’s own gun that had been discharged. It made no difference under the law: Hunter, Dooley and Michael Ryan had all gone there armed and masked to rob the house, which made each of them equally guilty of murder, alongside a fourth man, George Fuller, who turned Crown evidence against them.
Convicted within days, Hunter, Dooley and Ryan were hanged in Sydney on this day in 1816, their bodies afterwards handed over for dissection.
On the way to the gallows, Ryan led his companions in prayer, and all three were said to have met their deaths with sincere contrition.
