Maungatapu Murderers

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 35, 4 November 1933, Page 9

Maungatapu Murderers

Sir, —In your issue of yesterday the news is chronicled of tlie death of Mrs. Harriet Heron, of Roxburgh, at the age of 97. and it is added that while storekeeping after the "rush” to Gabriel s Gully, she had a visit from the Maungatapu murderers, Burgess, Kelly, Levy and Sullivan. This addition to the paragraph is incorrect, though I notice that Mr. Gilkison, of Dunedin, in his excellent Jittie volume on the history of Otago, makes himself responsible for the same error. To begin with. Burgess, Kelly, Levy and Sullivan were never associated together in Otago. Levy, though he was living contemporaneously on the Otago goldfields with Burgess and Kelly, was never in trouble until he was arrested <--n tlie night of Monday, June 18, 1866. in the Wakatu Hotel, Nelson, and there ;.s no evidence that he was concerned in any criminal undertaking prior to his ..s--soeiatiou with his partners in crime iu Hokitika. As for Sullivan, who "turned Queen’s evidence” in Nelson, he was never in Otago at all! He arrived in Hokitika from Melbourne in the steamer Albion mt April 12, ISG6, and had been associated with the other three just tvyo months before all four were arrested in Nelson. It was during those two months that six men. were murdered —Dobson iu the Brunner Gorge, on May 28, the battle in tlie Pelorus Valley on June 12. and Mathieu, Pontius. Kempthorne. and Dudlev on the day following on tlie Matingatapu Range. The police were of the opinion that other murders hud been committed on the West Coast by Burgess. Kelly, and Levy, and Sullivan stilted that, lie bad heard them dis'eussing other crimes of which they had been guilty, but obviously he could give no evidence of what hud occurred before he had joined them himself. Here is a curious fact, however, which explains how it has become accepted that Sullivan, the approver, was in Otago. Burgess, Kelly, and another. Sullivan, were arrested for highway robbery at Weatherstone, Otago, in 1863. Of course, the men appeared first in the Magistratels Court, when Burgess and Kelly were committed for trial, and later sentenced to a term of several years in Dunedin Gaol, but the magistrate held that there was insufficient evidence to convict Sullivan. and he was discharged accordingly. 9'liereafter he disappears' from the picture altogether. When they had served their time. Burgess and Kelly were escorted by the Otago Provincial Police as far as tlie boundary of Canterbury province, and thereafter allowed to do as they pleased. As a mailer of fact, they followed the valley of the Waifaki .River into the interior. and readied tlie West Coast by the valley of the Arahura. arriving at Hokitika in September, 1865. It was there that the pair become associated, first with Levy and then with, the second Sullivan.

Despite his turning approver. Sullivan was himself sentenced to death for the murder of Battle, of whose fate nothing was suspected until Sullivan had confessed. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life, however, partly for the reason that Sullivan’s evidence was required against several persons on the West Coast whom he had implicated, hut chiefly on grounds of public policy. Thereafter he was detained in Dunedin Gaol until 1874. when he was released conditional on his leaving the country. Having reached Auckland in disguise, he was later on recognised there, and finding it impossible for some time to obtain a passage, he managed to secure a berth on the ship Hindustan, on board which he sailed for England. He was identified during the voyage, however, and his arrival in London soon becme public propertv. He crossed promptly to France, but'within a year , he was recognised m Melbourne. There he warf arrested, but when he produced the Governor's pardon, it was found impossible to detain Inin. Subsequently he migrated to California, where he had a married sister, but there he wad recognised also, and soon saw fit to return to Victoria. The late Mr. Richardson Rae who died in this city in August, 1914, was wont to relate the circumstances under which he interviewed Sullivan at Maryborough. Victoria, during the Christma.4 of. 1880. Sullivan eerttiinly diod in I think in 18S1. One more curious fact. In September. 1885, the news was cabled to the Press of this country that Sullivan, the Maungatapu murderer, was dying in London. In all human probability the man referred to' was the first Sullivan, who had been acquitted by the magistrate in Dunedin in 1863. —I am. etc., „ P. J. O’REGAN. .Wellington, November 2.