The Outback’s Ax Murderer
On the way back from Sydney, John Lynch encountered a father and son driving another herd. He murdered both with his ax, and took their cattle. Next, he decided to settle accounts with the Mulligans, a family that owed him £30 for stolen goods he had sold them. He visited their farm, chopped them up with his ax, and burned their bodies. He then coolly made himself at home in his victims’ farm. He assumed the name John Dunleavy, and informed the Mulligans’ neighbors that he had bought the farm from the family, who had left town in a hurry without telling anybody.
As John Dunleavy, John Lynch got away with literal murder for years. Then in 1841, a cattle herder came upon the bludgeoned corpse of a local. He had last been seen a few days earlier, having dinner with a farmer named John Dunleavy. A police investigation was launched, and Dunleavy’s story about the “purchase” of his farm from the Mulligans in 1835 began to crack. Finally, a barmaid came forward and identified John Dunleavy and John Lynch as being the same person. Lynch was charged with murder, and at the end of his trial, it took the jury less than an hour to find him guilty. He was sentenced to death, and hanged in 1842.
