THE MANGATAPU MURDERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 October 1921, Page 11

THE MANGATAPU MURDERS.

A DESPERATE QUARTETTE.

WHERE DID SULLIVAN DIE! A paragraph appeared in a recent issue of the Auckland Star, suggesting that Sullivan, survivor of the gang which committed a series of atrocious murders in the ’sixties of last century, had only just died in Auckland, has elicited some particulars of the man and the crimes which he and his associates committed, from two correspondents.

A. Bomber writes:—“Regarding the story of the Manjatapu murders, which appeared in the S>. r. Sullivan left Auckland in the ship Hrndostan, Captain Feck, for London, at the end of March, 1871. I was a passenger with my parents. The late Captain Harrison and Mr. Noah were a«lso passengers. Sullivan came on board the morning the ship Naiiea. He was a nigiaive man, powerfully built. We did’ not know who he was for some days, but it appears that one of the crew of the ship knew him, having been mining down the West

Coast, and Sullivan had to look after himself after he was known, as the crew threatened to throw him overboard if he came near them. He hardly cam? on deck after his identity was disclosed, and when the ship reached the East India Docks, he left, and that is .the last I heard of him.” A BLOODTHIRSTY GANG. “Imprimatur” throws varied sidelights on the case. He writes:“Your interesting article in the Star, referring to the demise of the notorious Sullivan, an erstwhile member of the West Coast murder gang in ‘the dim long ago,’ will bring back memories to those old identities who have not as yet crossed the great divide. Burgess, Levi, Kelly and Sullivan were the quartette that invaded the West Coast in the mid ’sixties. The undoing of the gang was the murder of four storekeepers and gold buyers, from the town of Blenheim, i who stayed at a boarding-house the night before their murder, mid-way between Nelson and Blenheim. The murderers were also at the boarding-house the same night, and left early, in advance of their victims the following morning, waiting at a lonely spot on the track for the storekeepers’ am;-al. Here they bailed them up, and each member of the gang took a man into the bush under cover of the revolver and shot him. The horses were then shot, and the money, gold, and other things collected. The unfortunate victims were all married men, and when they did not return in due course their wives reported them missing to the policff.' The latter made inquiries, which resulted- in t*e clever capture of the four desperadoes, well armed. Sullivan turned Queen's evidence to save his neck. Had he remained silent it is doubtful if ft conviq tion could have been obtained, as the case for the Crown was weak. His three mates were hanged in Nelson gaol. The West Coast diggers were so incensed against Sullivan that 1500 diggers, each with a rope, were on the Hokitika beach ready to lynch him when the police landed him in a surf boat. To frustrate this the police shaved him and landed him in a police uniform unknown to the diggers. Burgess was reputed to be the worst of the gang, and had served a long term in Australia on the old prison hulk Success. Kelly was no relation in any way to Ned Kelly, of the Straithbogie Ranges; the latter I knew when he was 14 years old, when he was then along with Power, a Victorian knight of the road. The motto of the Sullivan gang was ‘dead men tell no tales,’ and to this they strictly adhered.”

METHODS OF KILLING. Strangling was one method used to put their victims to death when there was a probability of a shot being heard. In this way they put to death Jimmy Battle, an ex-man-o’-war sailor, who put up a desperate fight against the fiends, and whose last words were, “If I’m going to die I’ll die game,” and he fought to the bitter end. At the time Battle was murdered, the late Inspector James, of the Hokitika police, passed by on horseback along the beach. James told me afterwards that he was told the gang knew him and would not attack, as they knew he would be missed and a search made. Sullivan’s death has been reported in the Australian Press at various times during the past thirty years. Moa* Australian papers claim he succumbed in an institution there at Perth; sunny New South Wales reported his exit from this world in their land; Victorian papers reported his death there; while the Auckland Star says there is reason tc believe he died here. The latter statement I believe to be correct, as some seven years ago he lived within five minutes’ walk of Queen Street, and had a number of Australian papers, each of which had reference to his demise. Through a third party these papers, unknown to Sullivan, were shown to me, perused and returned. The reason of my seeing them that, as a writer of tales dealing with colonial life and desperadoes for an Australian paper, I was interested in such records.