The Gatton Murders

On the evening of 26 December 1898, three siblings departed their farmhouse in rural Queensland, headed for a dance nearby in the small town of Gatton. The following morning, their brother-in-law headed out on a horse to find them or the cart they had borrowed. After minutes of searching, he caught a glimpse of what looked like piles of clothing lying perfectly still beneath the hot summer sun...

On the evening of December 26, 1898, three siblings of a large farming family known as the Murphys rode in a horse-drawn cart down a rural road in Queensland, Australia toward the tiny town of Gatton.

It was the day after Christmas, or rather, Boxing Day, which is a continuation of the Christmas holiday celebrated in Britain and other parts of Europe; Gatton, which had a population of only 450 in 1900, sustained a community of Irish, German, and English families, so Boxing Day was observed by most, if not all, local residents. As parts of Australia were still colonized by the British in 1898, Boxing Day was widely celebrated and carried a tradition of charity and goodwill toward others.

Unfortunately for Michael, Nora, and Ellen Murphy, they would encounter anything but peace and goodwill on the road that night.

The siblings decided to attend a town dance at the Tarampa Divisional Hall, which was a few miles away from their family’s farm. Dressed in their best finery, Michael, who was 29 and back home for the holidays from his job at an experimental government farm nearby, decided to take his younger sisters, Nora (27) and Ellen (18), into town for some socializing, despite their overbearing mother Mary’s misgivings.

When they got to town, they found the dance hall dark and empty; the festivities had been canceled. Witnesses reported the Murphy cart, also called a sulky, immediately turned around and creaked back toward their farm.

Early the next morning, the Murphy family woke to find Michael, Nora, and Ellen had not returned during the night. Unaware that the dance had been canceled, they initially weren’t concerned; farm town dances were known to carry on until the wee hours of the morning, but when the trio hadn’t shown up by 8 am, William McNeil, the husband of the eldest Murphy child, decided to take a horse and go looking for them. It didn’t take long for him to find the distinctive tracks of the cart along the road. The cart the Murphy’s had taken to the dance belonged to McNeil, and it had a crooked wheel that left easily discernible divots in the dirt road.

McNeil followed the tracks into a nearby paddock, a fenced-in grassy area used to graze horses and cattle. Not far from the road, he found a strange scene; in a gum tree grove, McNeil saw from a distance his in-laws lying on the ground. To him, they appeared to be sleeping. As he got closer, however, he realized their state was anything but a peaceful slumber; Michael, Nora, and Ellen were all lying dead beneath the hot Australian summer sun, brutally murdered by an unknown assailant.

The brutality of the crimes shocked, frightened, and intrigued the tiny town and its 450 inhabitants, who expected the murders to be solved within a day or two. The subsequent botched investigation however turned the Gatton Mystery into the most notorious unsolved murder cases in Australia, one that still tantalizes amateur and professional sleuths to this day.

This is the story of the Gatton Murders.

The village of Gatton is located about 60 miles west of Brisbane in southeastern Australia. It began as a small settlement used by Royal Mail coaches to change and water their horses during long journeys- essentially a pit stop. By the mid-1850s, the village received their gazettal, which means an official publication was established for the purposes of providing the British colonial government with various information like land acquisition notices, government orders, and by-laws of companies under royal charter. This is the first step toward becoming a true residential area, and by the 1860s, land allotments were being sold to private families.

Once a rail station was established in Gatton in 1875, the town and the surrounding farmlands began to grow. It became a desirable settlement place for immigrant families looking for affordable land and new prospects for their children.

Daniel Murphy Sr., patriarch of the Murphy family, and his soon-to-be matriarch, Mary Holland, immigrated to Australia from Ireland separately sometime between 1862 and 1865. Immigration from Ireland to Australia boomed during these years as immigration to the United States slowed to a trickle during the Civil War due to naval blockades.

As was common for immigrant laborers, Daniel obtained work building the railroad shortly after his arrival. He installed rail in between the cities of Ipswich and Toowoomba, in the middle of which lay the town of Gatton. He met Mary Holland, who was most likely working as a domestic servant, and the two married sometime around 1866 settling on a rented farm outside of Gatton along a creek known as Blackfellows. With the help of their future ten children, the Murphys managed to carve out a relatively comfortable existence for themselves over the next 30+ years.

By 1898, their rental property spanned over 300 acres of green, tree-filled pastures and land for cultivating dairy cattle. Eight of their ten children were still living within their 5-room cottage; William (31), Norah (27), Patrick (24), Jeremiah (20), Ellen (18), John (15), and Catherine (13). Michael (29) and Daniel (21) had both moved out; Michael worked on the Westbrook Experimental Farm a few miles away, and Daniel lived and worked in Brisbane as a constable, or a police officer.

The eldest Murphy child, Polly, was 32 and the only one married. She and her husband William McNeil, and their two young daughters had recently moved back in with her family following a disabling accident that left Polly partially paralyzed.

The family seemed insular, if not hopelessly under the control of the matriarch. Mary Murphy allegedly ruled her family with an iron will, and her word was law in the household. Daniel Murphy on the other hand was a man of few words, an introvert who performed his farm work diligently and preferred to spend his quiet hours praying alone in his bedroom.

The intricacies of the Murphy family dynamic are not entirely known, but one might be able to glean some insight from the fact that in an age where marriage and children were tantamount to independence, the Murphy’s had seven children over the age of 18 who had yet to find partners and only two had moved away full time. What is known about the family is they were considered respectable in their township, which for Daniel Sr. and Mary who started their lives as poor, barely literate Irish Catholic immigrants, was worth its weight in gold.

The family was intensely religious and patronized Gatton’s St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

On Christmas Day 1898, the entire Murphy clan, excluding Daniel who was back in Brisbane on police duty, went to Christmas Mass; it was reported the family was in high spirits on the holiday.

The city of Gatton offered residents a relatively lively social life for such a rural place. With a cricket club, tennis club, dog tracks, fairs and festivals, and housework competitions, there was never a shortage of community activities nearby to partake in, especially around Christmas.

On Boxing Day, several of the Murphy children, including Ellen, Michael, William, John, Polly, and her husband William McNeil all went to the horse race track in nearby Mount Sylva. They spent the day watching the races, eating, and drinking to celebrate the holiday, but the real attraction was a dance being held in the town of Gatton that night. For the young single people in town, the country dances offered the best venue to cozy up to new romantic partners.

Not all the Murphys were going to the dance that night. Michael offered to take his two sisters, Nora and Ellen, into town for the party. Their brother-in-law offered them the use of his sulky cart so the women wouldn’t have to ride on horseback. Attached to his hip, Michael carried a small leather purse with 15 shillings in it to treat his sisters to whatever they desired that night.

Michael Murphy was closing out his twenties with a reputation as an integrity-driven hard worker with good looks. Physically fit and an excellent horse rider, Murphy volunteered part-time as a Mounted Infantry Sergeant.

Eighteen-year-old Ellen Murphy was described as a handsome and lively young woman with zeal; she caught the eye of many young men in the area, but she was apparently sweet on a musician playing at the Gatton dance that night.

Their sister, Nora, who was twenty-seven, was intelligent and apparently had suitors of her own, however, she lived her life for her family. Both women helped their mother keep house, but Nora’s role in the homemaking seemed to be invaluable; she cooked and cleaned for the family while caring for Polly’s two young children. The Gatton Dance on Boxing Day seemed to be a rare opportunity for Nora to metaphorically let her hair down.

Michael donned a three-piece suit and both women dressed in long attractive dark skirts with light-colored blouses. They squeezed into the small horse-drawn cart and started toward Gatton around 7 pm. Allegedly, they were all smiles and excitement as they pulled away from their parent’s property; it was the last their family would see any of them alive.

The next morning on December 27th, the Murphys rose from bed one by one and began attending to their normal farm duties. The yard was empty; neither horse nor sulky cart was present. Michael, Nora, and Ellen had not yet returned from town. No one on the farm was aware that the Gatton dance had been canceled the night before, and that the trio should have arrived home long before morning.

According to statements given by the family, William McNeil was the first of them to become worried about the whereabouts of the Murphy children. From the moment he appeared out of his bedroom, he expressed concern. His cart was old and unreliable, he said; it had a bum wheel and could have broken down somewhere along the road on their way back to the farm. Most of the family remained initially unconcerned until Mrs. Murphy finally asked McNeil to take one of the horses and go search for them. McNeil immediately set off toward Gatton, keeping his eyes peeled for the tracks of his sulky cart: the time was around 8 am.

Along the main road to Gatton, known as Tenthill Road, McNeil came upon the distinctive tracks he recognized as belonging to his old cart. They veered off the road into a large paddock belonging to one of the neighbors. McNeil followed the tracks to the edge of the paddock. He had to remove the wooden planks from the slip rail fence to enter, and then followed the cart tracks in and out of the paddock for a few hundred yards. After a few minutes of searching, he caught a glimpse of what looked like piles of clothing lying perfectly still beneath the hot summer sun. Nearby sat his cart; the horse was lying on the ground.

According to a statement given by McNeil (quote): “I thought they were sleeping in the sun. After I got a bit closer I saw the clothing of the girls was disarranged, and then I could see the ants crawling all over them. I did not go any further.” (Loc 667 of 4412 of The Gatton Murders: A True Story of Lust, Vengeance and Vile Retribution by Stephanie Bennett)

William McNeil ran back to the edge of the pasture, jumped on his horse, and rode into town. He stopped at the Brian Boru Hotel and told people inside that he had discovered three dead Murphy children in a paddock nearby before going onto the police station to report the crime. His stop at the hotel would end up causing severe problems for the investigators as word of the horrific deaths spread throughout the town.

William McNeil found a constable named Sergeant Arrell alone at the police barracks and told him what he’d found. The two men rode on horseback toward the crime scene; on the road they found the proprietor of the Brian Boru Hotel, Mr. Gilbert, traveling with three other men who had hopped into a horse and buggy and were riding out to investigate McNeil’s claims themselves.

Together, the six men found a nightmare-inducing scene that would haunt Gatton and Australia for generations to come.

At first glance, the bodies appeared serene, just as William McNeil had said. Nora’s body was lying almost face down on a rug spread beneath a gum tree. A few yards away from her, Ellen and Michael lay back to back. The bodies formed a rudimentary triangle with the sulky cart and the horse, which had been shot through the head, acting as the third point.

Each of the victim’s feet had been positioned to point westward. Nora and Ellen’s hands were tied behind their backs with their own handkerchiefs, while Michael’s hands were left free. Abrasions on his wrists indicated he may have been bound at some point, and a leather ratchet strap was found a few feet from his body. Clutched between his hands was the leather purse, empty of the fifteen shillings he had taken with them for the festivities the night before.

The initial viewers of the crime scene knew they needed a medical examiner to perform a post-mortem examination to learn the extent of the injuries, but they could see plainly from where they were standing that both Ellen and Nora had been raped.

Nora’s clothing was torn apart and her body was horrifically scratched. Her skirt was pulled up around her waist and her shirt torn open so that her breasts were visible. On her face, in addition to dozens of scratches, was a several-inch-long laceration along her right eye socket indicating someone had slashed at her face with a knife.

Ellen’s body, though still badly scratched, didn’t appear to be as brutally marred, but all three of the Murphy children had had their skulls bashed in with a heavy object. A bloody tree branch was found nearby. Michael appeared to have a small bullet hole through the forehead, but neither of the two sisters looked like they had been shot.

One look at the brutality and scope of the bloody murder scene had Sergeant Arrell running for the Gatton telegraph office. He knew that his rural police outfit lacked the manpower and know-how to handle a triple homicide, so he went into town to send an urgent message to the police commissioner in Brisbane, the largest major city nearby. He left Mr. Gilbert and his three companions to fend off any curious townsfolk who showed up to peruse the crime scene.

William McNeil rode back to the Murphy farm to inform the family of the murders. Shock and disbelief rippled through the family members as he told them. It is said that Daniel Murphy Sr. almost collapsed upon hearing the news, and Mary Murphy cried out for her poor children. Immediately, Mary Murphy wanted McNeil to take her to the crime scene, so they strapped two horses to the family buggy and made haste. She made sure to pack bedsheets to cover up the bodies of her slain children.

When they arrived, the scene was overrun with people. The men Sgt. Arrell left behind to guard the bodies had been unable or unwilling to keep bystanders from trampling all over the crime scene. The tracks leading from the slip rails to the bodies were all but destroyed. Evidence was handled and moved. The bodies of the Murphys were being viewed like morbid sideshow attractions.

Sgt Areell managed to fire off a telegraph message to Brisbane by mid-day and hurried back to the scene. After spending the better part of the afternoon shooing away morbidly curious laypeople, Arrell and his helpers butchered the Murphy horse in the paddock and recovered a .380 caliber bullet from between its eyes.

Arrell wanted to wait for a reply from Brisbane before moving the bodies, however, it would take several hours for the report to be taken seriously by the chief investigators and a full 24 hours for anyone from Brisbane’s Criminal Investigation Branch, or CBI, to be dispatched to Gatton to take over the investigation. As the sun blazed overhead and began to cook the bodies, people on the scene finally convinced Arrell to remove the Murphys back to the hotel in Gatton to await the medical examiner; William McNeil helped put the bodies in the Murphy buggy and drove them to the hotel. It was perhaps the only sound decision police made concerning the case in the first 48 hours.

The medical inspector Dr. Von Lossberg arrived via train from the nearby town of Ipswitch by 4 pm the day the bodies were discovered. By 7:30, his autopsies, if you can call them that, were complete, and he was boarding the train back home.

The following is a brief summary of Von Lossberg’s post-mortem examinations of Nora, Ellen, and Michael:

Ellen Murphy sustained a crushing blow to the head. The skull was so horribly fractured, her brain matter was visible through what remained of her hair. Dr. Von Lossberg found evidence of rape all over her person; someone had torn her undergarments and there were scratches and fingernail marks on the inside of her thighs and on her buttocks. Her exterior sexual organs were swollen and bruised, and inside, the doctor determined her hymen had been recently ruptured. Given the positioning of some of the scratches, it also looked like she had been sodomized. Blood and semen were left on her thighs, legs, and outer clothing. Her hands were bound tightly behind her back with her own handkerchief.

If possible, Norah’s attack looked even worse. Ellen was badly scratched, but Nora looked as though she had been beaten with a barbed stick. Her under and outer clothing, including her underwear, blouse, skirt, and jacket, was shredded, and she sustained similar injuries to her sexual organs. On her hands and knees, the doctor reported severe abrasions, and her neck had been bound tightly with a leather strap. She had probably been in and out of consciousness during the attack due to the restriction of airflow. The handkerchief which bound her hands had been tied so tightly, her hands had turned blue. The extent of her injuries suggested Nora had been gang-raped. Her attackers crushed the left side of her skull with a heavy object.

Michael also appeared to have been sexually assaulted in some way. The doctor found semen present on the inside and outside of the front of his pants, and the foreskin of his penis was badly swollen. Though he wasn’t found with bound hands, he had strap impressions on his wrists suggesting he’d been tightly bound at some point before his death. Someone had beaten his skull on the right side. Michael also had a possible bullet wound to the head, but Dr. Von Lossberg claimed no bullet was present and dismissed the thought.

Each of the victims had blood impressions on their clothes and skin that looked like they came from a corduroy-type fabric. There was also evidence that both women had been violated with the handle of a brass riding-whip which was missing from the scene.

The main problem with Dr. Von Lossberg’s evaluation of the bodies was a lack of thoroughness. He didn’t open up the corpses, and he rushed the exams. Later in 1899, during a Royal Commission inquiry into the police department’s conduct during this investigation, Von Lossberg’s examinations would come under heavy scrutiny, as would the conduct of the head of the C.I.B, Frederick Urquhart who arrived in Gatton the next day just in time for the funerals.

The local magistrates gave clearance for the bodies of the Murphy children to be buried the following day, December 28, two days after their murders. Oddly, William McNeil insisted on paying for the funerals for all three. Mourners came to pay their respects at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, and the Murphys were laid to rest.

Sergeant Frederick Urquhart caught a train from Brisbane to Gatton the morning of the 28th and arrived at the crime scene a full 24 hours after the bodies had been found. By January 5, 1899, nine days after the crime, the Brisbane police commissioner officially put Urquhart in charge of the Gatton Murders investigation.

Frederick Urquhart was born into a family of ancient Scottish aristocracy and educated in an English boarding school. After running away from home as a teenager, he worked his way aboard a boat to get to Australia, where he spent many years as a bushman for the Electric Telegraph Company. He became a police officer in 1889. By the late 1890s, he was appointed the head of the Criminal Investigation Branch despite a reputation for being arrogant, vindictive, and unwilling to listen to the opinions of others.

After reviewing the scant evidence in the case and discussing the lackluster post-mortem medical examinations with the constables and magistrates who were present, Urquhart immediately decided to exhume the bodies to see if more evidence could be found. Police brought in Dr. Wray, the Chief Government Medical Officer, to perform thorough autopsies on the three bodies.

He was able to determine straight away that Michael had in fact been shot through the head and retrieved a .380 caliber bullet from his skull, the same caliber of ammunition extracted from their horse. Another important determination made by Dr. Wray was he believed the perpetrator had been left-handed or ambidextrous; that tidbit could be helpful for investigators when narrowing down suspects in the coming months.

After taking stock of what remained of the crime scene, the evidence, and the autopsies, Urquhart sent a telegram back to his superiors in Brisbane:

“Circumstances point to premeditation. Details most atrocious. There is so far nothing to lay hold of.”

The case received considerable attention from newspapers and ordinary citizens all over Australia. Almost at once, police began receiving an outpouring of letters containing various armchair sleuth theories as to who was responsible.

After it was reported that a woman staying in a house close by the murder scene heard a female voice cry, “father!” a popular theory developed: perhaps Daniel Murphy Sr. had killed his children after discovering some form of incest between them. Worse, others went one step further to suggest Mr. Murphy was having inappropriate relations with his adult daughters himself.

For a family that prided themselves on the respectable position they held within their community, these accusations were devastating. Though this theory was never seriously entertained by investigators, the Murphy clan almost immediately clammed up and withheld any and all help from the police. The only exception was Daniel Murphy Jr. who was himself a police officer and bound by his profession to help in the investigation. Allegedly, the Murphys even refused to provide horses to aid searchers looking for clues through the paddock; police had to source their mounts from other farms.

The situation for police was made much worse following the discovery of the body of a 15-year-old boy named Alfred Hill, 40 miles away from Gatton. Reported missing by his parents on December 10th, his body was found on January 7th in a rural wild brush. His pony had been shot between the eyes just like the Murphy horse. Alfred had been shot in the head with a .380 cal liber gun, and his feet were arranged pointing west. Police immediately suspected his murder was connected with the Murphys’.

The savage murder of Alfred Hill added to the distress and hysteria of the public, and the press launched a full-scale attack on the CIB. Author Stephanie Barnett recorded the following newspaper clip in her book about the Gatton Murders, printed by the Brisbane Courier on January 9th:

“The police have failed to justify their existence as guardians of the public peace in the two tragedies, if not in connection with the Ipswich horror… at Gatton… the possibilities of successful detection were made nearly hopeless at the commencement, but lack of organization which allowed tracks to be obliterated and clues to be destroyed, while the post-mortem examination of the bodies seems to have been little better than perfunctory. These and other matters have awaited comment. We have purposely withheld criticism because, as soon as the gravity of the situation appeared, the authorities grappled their task with the greatest energy and enthusiasm.”

The relationship between police and the press continued to deteriorate over the next few months as the police chased leads to dead ends and the likelihood of solving the Murphy case became increasingly hopeless. Urquhart, who had a reputation for being particularly sensitive to criticism, reacted poorly to the press coverage of his investigation and all but refused to entertain any possible motives or suspects outside of his own purview.

Although many Gatton residents believed that several attackers had murdered the Murphys, Sergeant Urquhart made up his mind that the murders were the work of a single transient laborer who was not local to Gatton. His focus immediately fell to a man named Richard Burgess, an ex-convict who had arrived in the area in early December.

Burgess was released from his most recent prison stay on November 30, 1898, after a six-month sentence for raping an elderly woman near the town of Toowoomba, twenty miles from Gatton.

By the end of the first week of December, he was back in Brisbane. His location was always hard to pin down because he drifted from place to place, but he was arrested sixty miles north of Toowoomba on January 6th for ‘peculiar behavior.’ Police scrounged up a witness who said they saw someone who looked like Burgess lurking around where Alfred Hill was murdered, and given his criminal history, police suspected him of the Gatton murders despite eyewitnesses that put Burgess nowhere near Gatton on Boxing Day.

He was held in jail for several weeks for stealing a saddle while police tried to find evidence to charge him with the Gatton murders. Burgess’s alibi proved to be ironclad, however. He was released from custody in March 1899 and left Australia soon after.

A few weeks after the murders, it came to light that Michael Murphy, previously portrayed as the soul of integrity, may have had several sexual relationships with unmarried women around Gatton. There were rumors he had fathered at least a few children out of wedlock with one pregnancy resulting in the death of the young woman named Kate Ryan during childbirth.

The story went Michael seduced Kate, got her pregnant, and when the subject of marriage came up, his sisters Nora and Ellen were violently opposed to the match. Perhaps Michael’s philandering had angered relatives of the women who then sought revenge in the worst possible way?

It’s impossible to know, but Urquhart insisted the Kate Ryan story was false. According to him, though the Kate Ryan in question had a child out of wedlock, she had since married someone else and was living peacefully.

Another theory was that Nora Murphy had brought the attack on her and her siblings after tormenting an old teacher to the brink of insanity. Nora had allegedly sent nasty letters attacking the character of this teacher to a Queensland newspaper who had promptly published them. The episode caused the woman to have a breakdown, and her sisters vowed revenge. Again, this theory went nowhere.

William McNeil’s proximity to the murders and involvement in the investigation also raised eyebrows.

McNeil didn’t have the best relationship with his in-laws, and the circumstances surrounding his marriage to Polly Murphy, Mary and Daniel’s eldest child, were strained.

For one, McNeil was a Protestant; for the devout Catholic Mary Murphy, the idea that her daughter would marry a Protestant was deeply offensive. She allegedly forbid the relationship early on, but Polly defied her mother and married McNeil anyway. Two months later, Polly delivered a baby girl, which only made matters worse. This allegedly led to an estrangement for a few years, until shortly after the birth of her second child. Polly had some sort of accident that left her paralyzed on one side of her body. The details of this accident are murky, at best, but it’s been suggested that McNeil might have had something to do with the injury.

After the accident, the Murphy’s welcomed their eldest daughter and her family back into the household. They helped take care of Polly and her two young children. McNeil kept residence at a business he owned in town, but it purportedly burned down leaving McNeil with a hefty insurance payout. By Christmas 1898, he too was living in the Murphy house alongside his wife and children.

On Boxing Day, McNeil had apparently gotten quite drunk at the horse races. When the time came for Michael, Nora, and Ellen to leave for the Gatton dance, William offered to drive them, but they refused. Instead, he begrudgingly stayed home with his wife and children. His whereabouts afterward are spotty.

Mary Murphy insisted to investigators that McNeil was home the entire night. Mrs. Murphy said she went into their bedroom to get the table lamp after 11 pm and saw McNeil in bed.

Daniel Murphy claimed he heard McNeil talking to his daughter around 12 am but never actually saw him that night.

Polly said her husband came to bed and slept in his clothes, however, a neighbor later told police that Polly confided in her that McNeil had been out of the house for most of the night. Considering McNeil’s quick discovery of the bodies the next morning, many surmised he already knew that they were there. The fact that he was present for the post-mortem exams and then offered to pay for the funeral roused further suspicions. Police were initially suspicious of McNeil, but it never went beyond that.

Perhaps the most likely of all suspects was a young drifter going by the name Thomas Day. Day had been in Gatton for a few weeks working for a butcher named Mr. Clarke when the murders happened. His physical fitness and strength made him a perfect employee in Clarke’s slaughter yard. Clarke offered Day room and board, and Day made his home in a shack a few yards behind the Clark home. It just so happened that the Clark property was located beside the same paddock where the Murphy bodies were found.

Mr. Clark told investigators that on Boxing Night, he had held a fireworks display between 8 and 9 pm, during which Thomas Day was the only member of the household not present.

Investigators questioned Thomas Day about his whereabouts on the night of the murder, and he reported that he went to bed at 7 pm, read until he fell asleep, and never heard a sound during the night.

Interestingly, the witness who had reported hearing a feminine voice yell ‘Father’ on the night of the murders was actually staying at Mr. Clarke’s house, yet Day claimed he had heard nothing. Next, police searched his room and found a shirt with blood spatter on the sleeves. Day explained this away by claiming it was animal blood transferred to his clothing as he carried wet meat into town with his bare hands. He was told not to wash the shirt, but within days, Day had scrubbed the garment completely clean.

He had the proximity and the physical strength to commit the murders, but for some reason, Urquhart refused to consider him a viable suspect. Stephanie Bennett, the author of The Gatton Murders, surmises this is because Day was a mildly educated man; investigators found the man reading 14th-century Italian poetry when they came to question him about the Gatton Murders. Given Urquhart’s aristocratic background, he believed that educated people couldn’t commit heinous crimes. Urquhart gave Day personal permission to leave the area, and after a brief stint in the British armed forces in Brisbane, Thomas Day deserted and all but disappeared.

There were other constables who objected to Urquhart’s dismissal of Thomas Day as a suspect, including Sergeant Arrell, the initial investigator on the scene the day the bodies were found. It came out at the Royal Commission inquiry into the Queensland Police’s conduct a few months later that Urquhart had threatened Arrell and others with termination and general unpleasantness (i.e. I’ll make your life a living hell!) if they didn’t stop talking about Thomas Day.

What was Urquhart’s explanation behind the police failure to solve the Murphy murders?

“We have failed because from the very outset we had no chance of success.”

Saturday, October 27, 1900, a Western Australia newspaper reported on the suicide of a man known as Theo Farmer. It was quickly discovered this was the new alias of Thomas Day. The short article read:

“At an inquest today concerning the death of Theo Farmer, who died in the Sydney Hospital from results of a revolver wound, self-inflicted in a lodging-house on Wednesday last, a letter, which was scribbled in pencil found on the deceased was produced. It was of a rambling character and contained a number of allusions to the Gatton tragedy. It read: ‘Just a few words wishing to inform the public about the Gatton murder, which I suppose or hope will be found out when I am no more. I am going to my long rest, but still before I leave the world I wish to state what I know for a certain fact.’ Then followed a statement relating to several people in the Gatton district. The letter continued: ‘I know the public may wonder but I do not wonder, as I am quite sure the case was to be kept quiet among the police, which I think is about time they were shown up. So, hoping the Gatton affair will go ahead, I will conclude.’ A verdict of suicide was returned.”

The suicide note was not an explicit confession, but it remains one of the strongest pieces of evidence linking Thomas Day to the Gatton murders. Given the evidence that Nora and Ellen had been raped by several perpetrators, it may be possible that Tom Day linked up with a gang of locals and attacked the Murphys on their way home that night. To this day, many people believe him to be the most logical suspect in the murders of Michael, Nora, and Ellen Murphy, but given the passage of time, it is impossible to confirm the true identity of the murderer or murderers.

Unfortunately, this case looks like it will forever remain Unresolved.