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1860: Flogged as a Soldier, Broken on Norfolk Island, Hanged at Hobart: the Ruin of a Convict

Moments after the bolt was drawn at the Campbell Street Gaol in Hobart, the chaplain stepped forward and read aloud a letter the dead man had written the day before in the condemned cell. It was addressed “To all men at Port Arthur”, and Martin Lydon had begged that it be made public.

It was the story of a ruined life in a few lines. Disobedient at ten, a soldier at 16, Lydon struck an officer of his company in a moment of anger and was flogged: “this ruined me”. He came to hate the army and took to drink, and further violence saw him transported. “The vileness of Norfolk Island turned me into an animal,” he wrote. Only three weeks earlier, in H division, he had boasted that he did not care about being hanged. Now he called that his “wicked flashiness”: “Every man about to die must fear the judgment of God.”

Lydon had been capitally convicted in the Supreme Court of a felonious assault at Port Cygnet, south of Hobart, committed while drunk, a crime that then carried the death penalty. Lydon disputed part of the evidence given at his trial, but he did not dispute the sentence: what he had done in his drunkenness, he wrote, deserved death. “May the drunkenness that brought on me this misery be a warning to all of you.”

Norfolk Island settlement, 1838. Ink and wash drawing, artist unknown. State Library of New South Wales, SV8/Norf I/5.

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Assault Australia Confession Crime Execution Hobart Port Cygnet TAS Trial

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1883: “I Have Cooked Eight”: the Whispered Confession Only the Hangman Heard

Robert Francis Burns walked out of a Melbourne courtroom in August 1882 an acquitted man, and was arrested for a different murder before he had left the building. The first charge concerned a fellow railway navvy, last seen heading off with Burns and a gallon of whiskey. A headless body was found in the bush, but the Crown could not prove whose it was.

The second charge held. Michael Quinlivan, “a quiet saving man”, had been great mates with Burns, the only two Irishmen in their work gang. In June 1880 he withdrew 15 pounds from the bank, left a roadside hotel with Burns and was never seen alive again. Weeks later his body was found in a sheep paddock with a fractured skull.

The first jury could not agree after more than six hours; the second convicted in 45 minutes. On the gallows at Ararat Gaol, before about 30 spectators, the hangman was visibly nervous, and Burns plunged into eternity without any final words. Instead, he left a written statement thanking his gaolers, his lawyers and his priest, and admitting nothing.

Afterwards the hangman swore that as he pinioned the prisoner, Burns murmured: “I have cooked eight, five in Victoria and three in Sydney, and now you are going to cook me.”

Robert Francis Burns Mugshot: VPRS 515/P0000, Central Register for Male Prisoners 19384 - 19880 — Robert Francis Burns Mugshot: VPRS 515/P0000, Central Register for Male Prisoners 19384 – 19880

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1854: Anxious to Get Home for Their Dinner: the Killer Who Taunted His Jury, Hanged at Melbourne Gaol

John Hughes told the jurors who convicted him that they were “shopkeepers tired of waiting, and anxious to get home for their dinner”. They had taken ten minutes. Days later he was hanged behind Melbourne Gaol for the murder of Abraham Marcus, a traveller whose only mistake was chasing the men who stole his best horse.

In December 1852 Marcus was bound for the Ovens goldfields with his wife and nine-year-old son when their dray broke down at Yackandandah Creek. Four horsemen stopped, accepted a meal and even helped with the repairs. Hughes turned down four pounds for his tired horse and saddle, remarking that he would not go much further before he had another. When the riders had gone, so had the best of the Marcus horses, with the worn-out mount left in its place.

Marcus rode after them and seized the bridle. The gang kept him talking until a passing bullock dray was out of sight, then drew pistols, marched him into the bush and tied him to a tree, where he was later found dead. His whole party recognised the rope: it had hung around the neck of the horse Hughes rode. That same evening, by his own later account, the gang robbed a young Sydney man named Stone on his way home from the diggings; he broke free, was run down and killed, and his body was sunk in a creek, weighted with stones and a saddle.

A reward of 200 pounds was offered, but it was 1854 before the widow picked Hughes out of a line of 21 identically dressed prisoners in the yard of Darlinghurst Gaol. He made a long confession naming three accomplices, then asked to be sent to Melbourne quickly, since enough had been proved to hang him. At trial he called the jurors “new chums”, to laughter from the gallery. The judge replied that an innocent man would never have dared to browbeat a jury so, and that the clear evidence of the dead man’s young son had settled the matter.

From the dock Hughes withdrew his confession as false and swore the men he had named were innocent too: “I now say, and will on the day of my death, that I am an innocent man.” He went to the scaffold pale but composed, and made no further revelations.

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2020: The Claremont Serial Killer Convicted of Two Murders in Perth

After 24 years, the case that haunted Perth came down to a single judge and a 619-page verdict. Bradley Edwards, a 51-year-old former Telstra technician, was found guilty of two of the three Claremont murders and not guilty of the third.

All three women vanished after nights out in Claremont, then one of the busiest nightspots in the city. Sarah Spiers, 18, called a taxi from a phone booth at 2.06 am in January 1996; when it arrived three minutes later, she was gone. Her remains have never been found, and although Edwards was acquitted of her murder, the judge found it more likely than not that he was involved in her disappearance. Jane Rimmer, a 23-year-old childcare worker, was last seen on security footage that June and was found 55 days later in bushland by a family picking wildflowers. Ciara Glennon, a 27-year-old lawyer, disappeared in March 1997 and was found 19 days later in scrub north of the city.

The hunt became the biggest, longest and most expensive investigation in Western Australian history. Thousands of taxi drivers were fingerprinted and DNA tested, 110 “persons of interest” were sent a questionnaire asking “Are you the killer?”, and a public servant was pursued as the prime suspect for a decade before being cleared.

Edwards had no known link to the case until his arrest in December 2016. DNA found under the fingernails of his final victim matched a kimono dropped by an intruder fleeing a suburban house in 1988, and fibres on both bodies matched the Telstra-issue station wagon he drove at the time. Tried without a jury over seven months and more than 200 witnesses, he was sentenced to life with a 40-year minimum, the judge noting a “high likelihood” that he would die in prison.

Telephone booth at night with interior lights

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Australia Cold Case Missing Person Murder Perth Serial Killer Trial WA

1860: Flogged as a Soldier, Broken on Norfolk Island, Hanged at Hobart: the Ruin of a Convict

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1883: “I Have Cooked Eight”: the Whispered Confession Only the Hangman Heard

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1854: Anxious to Get Home for Their Dinner: the Killer Who Taunted His Jury, Hanged at Melbourne Gaol

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2020: The Claremont Serial Killer Convicted of Two Murders in Perth

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