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.
