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1866: The Sussex Street Mystery: Sydney‘s Inquest Returns a Verdict of Wilful Murder

In September 1866 a boy’s dog began scratching at a rubbish heap near Sussex Street in Sydney, and uncovered a charred, half-roasted human head. Further searching turned up the dismembered chest of a woman, but no other remains were ever found, and no one in the city had reported her missing.

At the inquest a young doctor testified that the head wounds had killed her almost instantly, and that her body had been carefully dissected and burned afterwards, evidently by someone with real anatomical skill, in an apparent effort to destroy any means of identifying her. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against a person or persons unknown, and the government posted a reward of two hundred pounds, offering a pardon to any accomplice willing to name the killer.

Close to the scene of the crime: Barker & Co. Mills, corner of Sussex and Bathurst Streets, Sydney, before June 1872. Possibly photographed by Charles Pickering. State Library of New South Wales, SPF/484.

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Australia Inquest Murder Mystery NSW Sydney Unsolved

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1977: The Banknote Clue That Could Have Caught the Yorkshire Ripper Years Early

Peter Sutcliffe hammered 20 year old Jean Jordan to death near a cemetery in Manchester, then realised the brand new £5 note he had just paid her was traceable straight back to his wage packet. Nine days later he returned in the dark to retrieve it, could not find it, and instead mutilated her body and attempted to cut off her head.

The note had been lying just outside the police search area the whole time, in her handbag under a fence. Detectives traced it to a Bradford pay run and interviewed thousands of workers, including Sutcliffe himself, twice. His alibi held, the inquiry stalled, and the man holding the incriminating fiver walked free for years before he was finally caught as the Yorkshire Ripper.

Piggy bank and new banknotes. Woman holding a piggy bank and new UK five pound notes | ID 82241351 © Peter Titmuss | Dreamstime.com — ID 82241351 © Peter Titmuss | Dreamstime.com

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Investigation Manchester Murder Police Serial Killer UK Yorkshire

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1851: He Prayed for His Own Son to Die: A Fatalist Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for Murder

Patrick Kennedy was a shepherd at an out-station near Penshurst in Victoria, sharing a hut with his wife and two other men. After a night of drinking, he turned on her the next afternoon without any clear provocation, kicking her so violently that the pattern of his boot nails was later found bruised into her body.

He was convicted at the Supreme Court and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 1 October 1851. The drop failed to kill him instantly, and he struggled for nearly three minutes, prompting the hangman to boast to bystanders that he had predicted exactly how long it would take.

In his final days Kennedy revealed a chilling belief in fatalism, insisting he was merely an instrument of forces beyond his control. He recalled that his small son used to prattle a rhyme, “mammy dead and dady gone,” which he took as a dark omen; when the boy died in custody during his imprisonment, Kennedy said plainly that he was glad.

He showed no remorse for the killing, telling gaolers only, “Drink did it all, but if it had not been done by drink, something else would have done it, as it was decreed to be done.”

Skull and vintage hourglass on wooden background in beam of light

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Australia Domestic Violence Execution Melbourne Murder Penshurst Trial VIC

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1917: Told to Dig a Hole in the Dark: the Stepson Who Undid Eugenia Falleni in the “Man-Woman” Trial at Darlinghurst

Annie Birkett married Harry Crawford in Sydney in 1913 not knowing that Crawford had been born Eugenia Falleni and had lived as a man for twenty years. A neighbour told her in 1917. That October the pair went picnicking at Chatswood and Annie never came home; a charred body was found in scrub off Mowbray Road the next morning, still alive when the fire was lit, the doctor said. It lay unidentified for three years. Falleni told her son she had run off with another man.

The boy remembered other things. Days after his mother vanished his stepfather took him to The Gap and tried to coax him to the cliff edge; a week later he led him into scrub at night, told him to dig a hole, then threw the shovel away and took him home. In 1920 the son went to police. The body was matched through its false teeth, and among its effects he knew his mother’s shoes, one sole mended by his stepfather. Tried at Darlinghurst in what the papers called the “Man-Woman case”, put into the dock first in a suit and then in a dress, Falleni was convicted in two hours.

Sentenced to death, later commuted to life, Falleni told the judge: “I am not guilty, your Honor. I know nothing whatsoever of this charge.”

Portrait of Annie Birkett, circa 1910. Justice & Police Museum Collection, Museums of History NSW. Gift of Linda Slinger, 2011. Accession no. JP2011/1-2.

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Australia Balmain Chatswood Darlinghurst Gender Identity Historical Crime Murder NSW Scandal Sydney Trial

1866: The Sussex Street Mystery: Sydney‘s Inquest Returns a Verdict of Wilful Murder

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1977: The Banknote Clue That Could Have Caught the Yorkshire Ripper Years Early

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1851: He Prayed for His Own Son to Die: A Fatalist Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for Murder

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1917: Told to Dig a Hole in the Dark: the Stepson Who Undid Eugenia Falleni in the “Man-Woman” Trial at Darlinghurst

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