In 1898, a mysterious murder occurred in Gatton, a quiet Australian town. The perpetrators have never been found. During the investigation, incestuous connections between the killed siblings came to light. There are many indications that their parents and even a local priest were involved!
Originally from Ireland, the Murphy family lived a quiet life on Blackfellow's Creek Farm, 9 kilometers outside Gatton, Queensland. Their happiness was cut short on December 26, 1898. Three siblings - Michael, twenty-eight, Nora, twenty-seven, and Ellen, eighteen - traveled to Gatton that day for a Christmas party. When the festival was canceled, inconsolable, they set off on their way back. They never made it home .
Collusion of silence
The next morning, their mother, Mary Murphy, asked her son-in-law William to check why the children had not returned for the night. William quickly recognized the traces of Michael's two-wheeler. He also noticed that, for unknown reasons, the carriage left the path and headed deeper into the nearby forest. The trail led to a clearing where was the bloody bodies of his relatives, arranged in a triangle. A dead horse was lying beside the carriage. . The man rushed to Gatton to call the police.
The Murphy family:parents Daniel and Mary with eight of their ten children, months before the tragedy. Second and third from the right are Ellen and Norah (source:public domain).
William didn't know the town and didn't know where to find the outpost. So he informed the local bartender about everything. It was enough for the news to spread around the neighborhood in no time. Over the next hour, loads of local residents turned up at the crime scene.
Sergeant Arrel, who arrived at the scene, was unable to properly secure the tracks, which made the investigation very difficult in the following days. The bodies were loaded onto a wagon and driven to the nearest pub, where they were stored in one of the rooms.
The next day, Dr. Lossberg arrived to inspect the body. His cursory examination revealed that both women had been brutally raped and then killed with blows of a heavy object to the head. Ellen received one blow that smashed her skull into seven pieces .
A similar blow also killed Michael, who had previously been shot in the head. In addition, there were traces of sperm on his shirt, tucked into unbuttoned pants. The horse was also dead. The animal had its throat cut and its head shot through.
Gatton Town is not huge, but it has a lot of mystery. Contemporary NASA photography (public domain).
Sergeant Arrel did not agree that the women were raped. In his opinion, the crime scene did not indicate that there was any struggle or resistance on the part of women there. Inspector Galbraight agreed with the opinion that the sisters had sex voluntarily.
Gatton residents have argued from the outset that the crime was committed by a "stranger." However, no one wanted to discuss it with law enforcement. There was a conspiracy of silence in the town. Investigators believed this version of events. They completely disregarded evidence suggesting that the murders had been committed by someone who knew the victims.
Aborigines on track
The police were helpless. So it was decided to bring in Aboriginal trackers who immediately stated: "Here was an orgy, and then there was a murder" . They quickly found the murder weapon - a fragment of a eucalyptus branch with traces of blood and the hair of the victims.
They also found a harness strap containing an obituary from the local newspaper. It concerned a young woman from Gatton who had died with her baby in childbirth exactly two years earlier. The child's father was Michael. As it turned out, Nora Murphy was a friend of the deceased, and she kept her obituary in a box in her bedroom. Police officers found that a few days before the tragedy, the obituary had mysteriously disappeared from the box.
Along the traces of the carriage, the Aborigines discovered fresh hoof prints of an uncovered pony that broke in the clearing. There were only two ponies in the area, and one of them belonged to the father of the murdered siblings. The tracker said he would recognize the tracks if he inspected both ponies. His suggestion was ignored and not taken on.
Even an Aboriginal tracker was engaged to solve the mystery of the crime. Alexander Schramm's painting "European settlers with aborigines" from 1850 (source:public domain).
Suspicions fell on other "strangers". Young cowboy Tom Ryan, homeless Burgess, butcher's assistant Tomas Day and tramp John Quinn only avoided lynching thanks to law enforcement protection.
"Father! Father! ”
120 years ago, no traces of blood and sperm could be identified. Dr. Lossberg did not even have tweezers, and he did the autopsy without gloves. Despite all these shortcomings, Inspector Galbraight said with full confidence that the siblings had sex together before their death.
Despite the involvement of Queensland Police Headquarters in the case, the matter was unsolved. Police Christmas card, written two years after the murder (source:public domain).
Was there anyone else with them? This has not been established. Traces of rape turned out to be only the remains of hard sex, also anal sex. Apart from Michael's open fly, there were no abnormalities in his clothing. It follows that there was no fight between him and the attacker before he was shot. The bodies of the sisters also showed no attempt to defend themselves.
A few days after the tragedy, Clarke's maid testified that on the night of the murder she heard two revolver shots and a woman's scream:"Father! Father! ” . So it was decided to take a closer look at the victims' parents. When they were brought to the scene, they were too calm for people who had just lost their children.
When Mary Murphy saw their bodies, all she said was, "At least their souls are still alive in heaven and I will meet them soon." One of the local journalists remembered that when she bent over the bodies of her daughters, she whispered to herself, "It's good that at least they were at the last Sunday mass." After these words, she went deep into the forest and, as witnesses testified, "prayed for the souls of the murderers (!) Of her children" . How did she know there were several murderers? Only she knew the answer.
Father, Daniel Murphy, gave evasive answers. He often changed versions of his testimony. He seemed to be hiding something. He also refused to let his pony be seen by an Aboriginal tracker. It remains a mystery why the police did not push for such a confrontation.
And life went on ... Gatton residents outside Park View House in 1906 (source:public domain).
The "Gatton murder" case was not closed until the 1960s, granting it "unsolved" status. The older inhabitants of the town do not want to talk about this crime to this day, which makes it clear that the murderer could not be someone "stranger". Although the perpetrator has long been dead, revealing his name could disgrace his living descendants and destroy his family's reputation.
Secret taken to the grave
The historian Richard Price has been researching the case for 30 years. He reached the last surviving member of the Murphy family who claimed to know who killed the siblings and why he did it. When Price asked to name the murderer, he replied: This is a shameful matter for the family and I will not talk about it. I'm going to take the secret to the grave ” . Soon after, he kept his word.
The locals did not want to come back to the murder case. The last member of the family took the mystery of the crime to the grave. In the photo of the Royal Bank in Gatton around 1906 (source:public domain).
Was the murderer supposed to be the head of the Murphy family? Maybe he knew about the sexual preferences of his children and decided to deal with this embarrassing problem in such a drastic way? What if he accidentally caught his kids in an "incestuous triangle" and in an attack of fury did he lynch his children?
If so, he was acting in concert with his wife - this was indicated by their strange behavior shortly after the tragedy. Richard Price asked the Gatton people about it. For this reason, he was threatened with death several times and warned to stop rummaging in other people's affairs. He was even mugged one of the local shops once.
When Richard Price arrived at Gatton, he was punched in the teeth instead of information. One of the local hotels in the photo (photo:Jan Smith, CC BY 2.0 license).
Historian Steve Behnke has come to a different conclusion. According to him, the crime was committed by the local priest Daniel Welsh . Behnke discovered that the clergyman lived closest to the crime scene and was also in the habit of borrowing a pony from Daniel Murphy.
Suspicion was also raised by the hasty funeral of the victims, demanded by Welsh. The burial took place at noon, the day after the body had been found. Additionally, local residents gossiped about the priest's affair with Nora, who was supposed to be pregnant with him at the time of his death. Perhaps the desire to conceal his fatherhood pushed the priest to crime. A few months later, Daniel Welsh committed suicide. Is it remorse?
The victim's last words:“Father! father!" could refer to both Daniel Murphy and Daniel Welsh.
The conspiracy of silence continues to this day and there are no signs that the situation in this sleepy town will ever change. However, there are many people willing to discover the truth. The prize of one thousand nineteenth-century pounds, which was set in 1898 for anyone who helps to solve the mystery of the Gatton crime, is still valid. This amount is worth over a million dollars today . All you have to do is name the murderer.