the injustice of the law and court system. By now the reward had quadrupled.
When the gang fled, aboriginal trackers were brought in to trace them.
In 1880 they once again took over an inn, holding many hostages, and tried
to derail a train carrying police officers coming to arrest them. This failed and
the inn was surrounded. The gang had made themselves metal armour from
parts of ploughs, and Kelly slipped out of the inn in an attempt to outflank the
police. The armour did not cover his legs–the police shot low and brought
him down. One of his gang was killed in the shooting, and brother Dan and
another member took poison. Kelly was the last survivor and he was hanged
in November 1880 at Melbourne.
New archaeological excavations uncovered the mass graves, but the last
and largest grave was not where it was supposed to be. It finally appeared in
February 2009, a hundred feet from its supposed position, possibly carelessly
relocated during drainage work in the 1960s. There were twentyfour coffins
containing the mixed remains of fifteen men. Work began on sorting them out.
Meanwhile, it seems that Kelly’s skull had been removed in 1937 and not re
interred with the rest of the bones. It had passed through a number of hands until
it was placed in the museum of Old Melbourne Gaol, from where it was stolen
in 1978. It was returned in 2009, with no record of how it had come to light.
Xrays, CAT scans and photographs of the skull were taken and studied and
compared to existing photographs of Kelly and to the plaster death mask taken
after his execution. Although it was an exact fit, this was not conclusive
because another death mask also provided a good fit–that of Frederick
Deeming, an executed serial killer.
The next step was to recover mitochondrial DNA from the bones in the
grave and from the skull. This was compared to mtDNA from the living great
grandson of Kelly’s sister. One set of bones matched–but not the skull. The
bones also showed evidence that matched Kelly’s injuries–lead pellets and
marks of gunshot wounds to his leg, arm and foot were found.
So who did the skull belong to? There are no known living descendants of
Deeming to compare the DNA with, so this remains a mystery. And Kelly’s
skull? A fragment of cranium was found in the jumble of bones and could be a
match. It carries saw marks, as do some of the cervical vertebrae, evidence of
postmortem dissection. Where the rest of the skull is remains yet another
unsolved question.^12
Frederick Deeming was born in Leicestershire in 1853. After running
away to sea, he became an habitual criminal. In 1882 he moved to Australia,
and was soon in trouble with the law. In 1887 he disappeared while on bail.
He was in South Africa in 18889, where he was involved in a diamond
VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN CRIME