(hooves pounding)
- October 26, 1878.
The crack of gunfire echoes around
Victoria's Wombat Ranges.
(guns firing)
Two police officers lie dead.
Another flees for his life.
Outlaw Ned Kelly chases down a fourth policeman
desperately trying to escape.
Folklore holds Australia's most famous
bushranger to be a national hero.
But what if Ned Kelly was a clear eyed killer?
(gun fires)
(dramatic music)
Our nation's history is etched with bushranger tales.
Stories of rebels and outlaws,
and those who fought against them.
I'm a descendant of bushrangers
and I really want to know just how true
these epic tales really are.
So come with me and a team of experts
as we unearth the truth behind Australia's most
infamous lawless legends.
(tense music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ You'd kill me in my sleep ♪
♪ 'Twas you who loosed the dogs of war ♪
♪ Set in flame I'll keep ♪
♪ Hide behind that policeman's badge ♪
♪ And grip your judge's hand ♪
♪ I'll hunt you down and cut you up ♪
♪ We'll see who's judgment stands ♪
(ominous music)
(dramatic music)
This region of Northeast Victoria
is known as Kelly Country.
And it was here over a century ago
that the Kelly Gang rode these ranges.
And for over two years, they held up towns,
they robbed banks, and always claiming
to be the champions of the downtrodden and the poor.
But the debate over whether Ned Kelly is
a true hero of the people or just
a murderous villain continues to rage.
(dramatic music)
(gun fires)
Ned Kelly is most famous for leading
a gun blazing shootout against police at Glenrowan.
(gun cocks and fires)
And for being hanged on the gallows of
Melbourne jail when he was just 25.
Yet Ned Kelly is more myth than a man.
Who's the real bushranger that many Australians
hold up as a national hero?
We know how his story ends,
so we're on a journey to where it all began
at a place called Stringybark Creek.
(river running gently)
Somewhere around here, three police officers were killed.
All the bullets supposedly coming from
Ned Kelly's gun.
Kelly claimed his intention was only to rob the police.
To take their horses, their guns, and their food.
But of course, that's not what happened.
(dramatic music)
The story goes, that on the 26th of October 1878,
Ned Kelly is on the run,
hiding out in the Bush with brother Dan
and mates Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.
Kelly's been accused of the attempted murder of a policeman.
A police search party makes camp nearby.
Kelly attacks the camp,
almost immediately killing a young constable Thomas Lonigan.
(gun firing)
When the others returned from patrol, another policeman,
Constable Michael Scanlon, is also killed.
(gun fires)
A third constable, Thomas McIntyre, escapes
seeing their leader. Sergeant Michael Kennedy
being chased by Ned Kelly into the bush.
Five days later, Kennedy's body is found
with a gaping hole in his chest.
Later still, Kelly claimed it was all in self-defense.
(dramatic music)
After almost 140 years, what happened here
remains shrouded in mystery.
Now, the "Lawless" team are here to search for answers.
Archeologist Adam Ford has led major excavations,
unearthing mysteries right around the world.
It's a fantastic spot.
Professor Roger Byard is a leading
forensic pathologist who's investigated
over 6,000 deaths.
And historian Dr. Kiera Lindsey is an author
and scholar of Australian colonial history.
Let's go. Let's start.
(dramatic music)
Their mission?
To uncover fresh evidence into what really happened.
This site has never had a full scientific
investigation until now.
And Kiera has something new to bring to the table.
- In 2008, an archivist at the Victorian Police Museum
was going through some scrapbooks that had
belonged to Constable Thomas McIntyre.
The only surviving policeman from
the Stringybark Creek incident.
And in them, the archivist found this document
carefully folded up in between the pages.
And when she opened it up, here it was.
A map!
This incredible find.
- It's rare to find something as significant
as this in an archive.
This is documentary gold, because it is McIntyre
explaining in great detail how the ambush
at Stringybark Creek unfolded.
Each protagonist is noted like a chess piece
on this piece of paper.
We know the distances between these guys
and we know the trajectory of fire.
This is extremely unique
and for me it'll really help my archeological investigation.
- The record that Dr. Reynolds wrote
after he'd examined the bodies after they'd been shot,
and he's document that for the court cases.
He's documented the wounds.
And with this I can then try and work out
exactly a sequence of events.
Were the stories that were told real?
Do they fit?
Don't they fit?
And putting that together with the map is just wonderful.
(dramatic music)
- Right up until his death, Ned Kelly
always maintained that he was the one
who had to defend himself against the authorities.
He said the police were determined to kill him.
Declaring that if they came upon us at our camp,
they'd shoot us down like dogs.
But from the moment Kelly fired the first fatal shot
at Stringybark Creek, he became the killer.
So what really happened?
Did Kelly shoot in self-defense?
Or was it cold blooded murder?
(dramatic music)
The killings at Stringybark Creek
had a deep impact on the families of the victims.
Leo Kennedy is the descendant of Sergeant Michael Kennedy,
the senior policemen who was gunned down.
- [Leo] I'm Sergeant Michael Kennedy's great-grandson.
- [Mike] How did you first hear about
the Ned Kelly saga?
- I'd heard the kids at school talking about
this bad person in relation to me.
And I came home confused
and said, who on earth is Ned Kelly
and what on earth has he got to do with me?
And then Dad basically sat me down and told me
that Ned Kelly was the murderer of your
great-grandfather, Sergeant Michael Kennedy.
A good policeman, a fine man, a father of five children,
murdered by him.
- [Mike] The lawless actions of the Kellys
stood in stark contrast to the lawful path
taken by most in the colony.
This was a time of unique opportunity for
the working poor, following years of land
and class tensions.
- When I think about this region in the 1870's
I think about families living in small
blocks in huts with farms.
The land is not necessarily that good,
but they're working bloody hard to try
and turn it into something and
to live an honorable, if humble life.
But that sort of existence wasn't for everyone.
And you know, Ned Kelly and his gang
had a reputation for being bush larrikins.
People who saw themselves above the law
and certainly a whole lot better
than that kind of respectable way of life.
(hooves pounding)
- [Mike] The Kellys had a history of a life of crime
that went back through the family for generations.
- The Kelly boys, they also were known
to have quite a talent for stealing and
selling other people's stock.
And in fact, where we are right here,
this was part of an extensive stock-thieving empire
that sprawled all the way from New South Wales
and all the way into Victoria.
One policeman said that he had never seen
something so professional,
that it was organized down to the final detail.
(tense music)
- [Mike] Kelly country is still home
to many descendants of the family,
including Ned Kelly's great-nephew, Anthony Griffiths.
Anthony, what's it been like for you
as a descendant and your descendants,
being related to Ned Kelly?
- It's pretty special, really.
It's just one of those things.
We take it for granted, but every now and again,
particularly when you talk to other people,
you just think this is pretty special.
It's pretty nice.
- Was that a good feeling?
As a young boy?
- Some people had an adverse reaction.
You'd think, well, what's the problem here?
I didn't do anything.
- Hmm.
- Um, especially as a child,
that was a bit hard to relate to sometimes.
- [Mike] What sort of shadow that's cast over your family?
- Well, my grandfather being Ned's nephew,
they basically couldn't go into a hotel
anywhere where they were known
without people lining up to have a punch-on with them
for the fact that, well, let's try and
beat up one of Ned Kelly's nephews.
And so from that perspective,
they saw being a Kelly relative as quite problematic.
Um, it had direct impacts.
(tense music)
- Even though the bodies were recovered
within a couple of days of the ambush,
the exact location of the police camp
and even the location of Sergeant Kennedy's body
was never properly recorded.
So this signpost declares that this landscape here
is the official site of the police shooting,
but no one really knows for sure.
- [Mike] So you're saying that the official site
could be wrong.
- [Adam] That's exactly what I'm saying.
- [Mike] Well.
- This photograph was taken by a guy called Berman,
who followed the police back to Stringybark Creek
to record the crime scene.
But it also shows a number of little tantalizing features
of the location.
You see these trees marching up the slope here?
When you look at it and you look at this landscape,
they don't match.
There is no similarities at all.
So the more compelling piece of evidence, I think,
is this.
It's a reproduction of a survey plan from 1884.
As you know, surveyors, I mean, their job is to be accurate.
So, for me it's a more reliable document
and you can see here, it shows Stringybark Creek
and on the edge of it is that tiny dot there
with the word hut.
And it says, quite unequivocally,
the scene of the police murders by the Kelly Gang.
But interestingly, it depicts the hut
on the western side of the creek
and we're here on the eastern side of the creek.
- This is the wrong side.
- I really think so.
I think the signage is in the wrong spot.
So what we need to do is we need to find that clearing.
And we also need to find the footprints,
or the archeological remains of that hut.
If we can do that, then we can find the location
of where the police were killed.
- How are you going to do that
when no one else has been able to?
- Well, I'm going to employ a new piece of technology
that uses lasers to survey this whole landscape
and I think it's going to be a game changer.
(dramatic music)
- Can modern science finally identify
the true site of the police shootings?
And will it help reveal what really happened
here at Stringybark Creek?
(water lapping)
This is said to be the campsite
where three police officers were ambushed and killed
by Ned Kelly and his gang almost 140 years ago.
But mystery still surrounds the shootings.
Kelly claims he acted in self-defense.
Other say he came here looking for blood.
So I'm here with the "Lawless" team of experts
searching for answers.
And already, they suspect that this official site
may not be the actual crime scene.
(gentle music)
The actual site has been debated by experts for decades,
but Adam is the first to use cutting edge technology
in the search for the true crime scene.
- These guys are setting up this big drone,
this UAV, and it's gonna have a LiDAR pod
sitting underneath it.
LiDAR is this really exciting emerging technology
that the archeologists can use
to scan the landscape from above.
- [Mike] Adam is trying to locate a hut
marked on an 1884 surveyors map.
But first he needs LiDAR to reveal a crucial landmark.
- So what I'm after is for you to find
this one to two acre flat clearing
that's described by McIntyre and Kelly.
- Yep.
- Where this police camp was
and where this ambush took place.
And it's somewhere in here.
(upbeat music)
Jeremy, what are we looking at here?
- So what we're seeing here is the three dimensional model
of the scene as the LiDAR is collecting it.
(upbeat music)
The lasers are firing at about 200,000 times per second
and any time that the laser hits an object,
a part of that light is reflected back to the LiDAR
and is registered and geo-referenced back to the planet.
So the effect is, we see hundreds of thousands,
then literally millions of points come together
in real-time and it creates a three-dimensional model
of what we're seeing in the world.
- So what we're seeing up there, the big bug in the sky,
is painting all that?
- That's correct.
The aircraft itself is just there where the crosshair is.
- That's extraordinary.
I can see the road and I can see the trees.
(upbeat music)
- [Mike] The results are ready at Monash University's
visualization lab called CAVE2.
- David's the director of CAVE2 and he's helped me
create this incredible image.
(dramatic music)
Now, what you're seeing here is a visualization
of all those data points that we collected
up at Stringybark Creek using the LiDAR and the drone.
- God, it's visually sublime.
- And hopefully when we remove the vegetation,
the landscape is gonna tell us the story.
It's gonna show me where that flat area is,
the location of where the police were killed.
Can we do that, David?
- Absolutely we can.
(dramatic music)
- Amazing!
- No one has ever seen Stringybark Creek like this.
And what David can do is, he can take us on a ramble
through this landscape.
You can get an impression and you can see the topography.
- [Mike] Wow.
- [Adam] You can see--
- [Mike] Fantastic!
- [Adam] You can see the slope.
- You just wanna keep walking.
I mean, I wanna walk.
- Here on this side of the creek,
across this little bridge here,
is the location where the signage indicates
that this is where the official campsite--
- "Official."
- This is is where the police were supposedly
ambushed by the Kellys and killed.
And what I'm looking for is an area of a flat ground.
See, I think around here
looks promising to me.
This area is the largest area of flattish ground
along the whole creek line.
This is my candidate site.
This is where I'd like to drop a pin.
Can we do that, David, please?
- [David] Mm-hmm.
- The next thing I can do, though,
is to compare that to the 1884 survey plan.
Ah, this is looking amazing.
This is great!
Look at this, this splodge here.
- Mm-hmm.
- That is the location that the surveyor describes the hut.
You see, he's got hut written here.
- [Mike] Right.
- And he's got this brilliant saying it's the
scene of the police murders by the Kelly Gang.
Well, the hut's the pivotal point.
It's the important bit.
Because if I can find physical remains of that,
then I can extrapolate the location
of where the police tent was
and pinpoint the locations of where
Scanlon and Lonigan were killed.
We can solve the mystery of the actual location
of this event in 1878 and crucially,
we can perhaps give ourselves the best option
of trying to find the location
of where Sergeant Kennedy fell.
(tense music)
- [Mike] To better understand the events
at Stringybark Creek, we need to wind back
to an incident that occurred six months earlier,
to the night when a constable called
Alexander Fitzpatrick arrived at the Kelly family home.
Kelly's mother, Ellen, was operating a sly grog inn
from their house and the story goes like this.
- Constable Fitzpatrick came frequently
to Ellen Kelly's sly grog inn
and had a particular liking for her grog
and her pretty daughter, Kate Kelly.
- [Mike] Fitzpatrick intends to arrest
Ned's younger brother, Dan, for horse stealing.
But it doesn't go to plan.
- What happens next is open to a whole lot of conjecture,
both then and now by historians.
It's said that Fitzpatrick was perhaps
just a little too friendly with Kate Kelly
and that when Ellen Kelly came into the room,
she tried to stop him by picking up the fire shovel
and whacking Fitzpatrick across the head with it.
We don't know what else actually happened,
but everyone agrees that there was a struggle.
What we do know is that Fitzpatrick returned back
to his offices claiming that he had been shot by Ned Kelly.
There was no conclusive evidence to verify
that there had been a shooting,
but there was an injury.
And within a very short period of time,
warrants of arrest were out for Dan and Ned Kelly
for attempted murder, shooting a police officer,
and arrests were made of Ellen Kelly
and two other blokes who were at the property at the time.
(hooves pounding)
Ned and Dan Kelly take to the hills
and are now officially on the run,
hiding out in the bush.
Ellen Kelly is arrested, still nursing her newly born baby,
and she's sentenced to three years hard labor.
You can imagine Ned thinking about his mother
and his newly born sibling in jail.
Such was his fury at the police
that he said that he would scatter their blood and brain
like rain.
This was the catalyst moment that led to Stringybark Creek.
(horses snorting)
- The charges that were laid against the family
were just completely outrageous.
And they set then a whole train of events in action
that I don't think anybody could have foreseen.
If there was one thing you could do
to unravel the whole Kelly story,
if you could reach back and somehow stop
Fitzpatrick visiting on that night,
most of the Kelly saga would not have happened,
I believe.
(hooves pounding)
- [Mike] Ned and Dan Kelly take cover in their hideout
deep in the Wombat Ranges.
Supporters from nearby Greta bring them food and supplies.
They also bring information about the police
who are coming after them.
(dramatic music)
Adam needs to find where the police made camp,
searching for a hut marked on the 1884 surveyors map
and the LiDAR technology has led him
to an extraordinary find.
- So this is the fireplace.
- Yep, absolutely.
(soil sifting)
- We've had a couple of pieces of ceramic.
- [Adam] Yeah, that's--
- Well, it's mid 19th century,
so it's within the range, but um...
- That's cool.
- Yeah, it's--
- That sounds so good.
I really think we're on it here.
(dramatic music)
This is a very exciting day for me, Mike,
to show you the results of our endeavors.
And as you know, our goal of identifying
once and for all the location of the police camp
hinged on us finding archeological remains of this hut
and we've done it.
And what we found is a nice little domestic hut
in the middle of this bush.
- So this is the coordinate for you.
- That's right.
This gave us the crucial information we needed
to find this police camp,
to find the location of the shootout
and it's over here.
- [Mike] Wow.
300 meters from the official police campsite
is Adam's newly discovered camp location.
- We can now assert for the first time ever
that this location here is the site of the shootout
and the killing of the police on the 26th of October 1878.
(birds calling)
It's difficult, though, isn't it?
You know, you're here and it's such a prosaic
and peaceful landscape.
This is where people have their picnics.
And for years everyone's walking around
in the middle of a crime scene.
I think they're gonna have to perhaps move the barbecue.
(Mike laughs)
- I think so!
You deserve a bit of a hug.
- Uh. (chuckles)
Come in, then, big boy.
(both laughing)
- It's been daunting.
Congratulations.
- [Adam] Thanks, man.
- [Mike] Just amazing.
(dramatic music)
The policemen had unwittingly made their camp here
just over a kilometer from the Kelly hideout.
Ned Kelly later boasted that he tracked their camp.
He knew exactly where they were.
So why did Kelly choose to ambush
rather than just make a clean getaway?
What do you think Ned's intentions were?
To rob the police, to embarrass them,
to steal their horses?
- Well, getting their horses and arms
would've been a pretty good start
'cause they were both well mounted and well armed.
- [Mike] Mm.
- Something that were highly prized at the time.
I don't for a minute believe that he would have
captured them just with the intent of actually harming them.
I think it would've been more to the basis of
embarrassing them, who knows?
(tense music)
- These are big logs, you know?
They surprised me when we mapped 'em out
how large they were.
- [Mike] Roger and Adam compared Ned Kelly's version
of the event with Constable McIntyre's.
Now they can plot his valuable map
onto the actual crime scene.
- So according to McIntyre, he was standing here
in this location,
making some tea.
- Right.
- Boiling the billy for his mate Constable Lonigan,
who was standing over here, waiting for the other guys
to come back from patrol.
So we have Steve Hart at this end.
We have Ned Kelly's younger brother, Dan Kelly, here.
And we have Ned Kelly's best mate, Joe Byrne, here.
And of course, Ned Kelly himself standing here.
McIntyre, who's unarmed, immediately surrenders
and throws up his arms.
- [Roger] Mm-hmm.
- But according to McIntyre, his colleague doesn't.
Lonigan reaches for his sidearm, his handgun,
and starts to run.
And it's about here that Kelly raises his weapon,
fires, and hits Lonigan.
And McIntyre says Lonigan then stumbles four paces.
One, two, three, four paces.
Collapses to the ground and dies.
- According to McIntyre, Lonigan came over here.
He's running away as he gets shot by Kelly.
Kelly, on the other hand, says that,
"No, I was shooting at him."
In fact, Ned's own words:
"I called at them in to throw up their hands.
"McIntyre obeyed and Lonigan ran some six or seven yards
"to a battery of logs instead of
"dropping behind the one he was sitting on,
"he just got to the logs, he put his head up to take aim
"when I shot him the instant he would have shot me."
- [Mike] This was the moment when Ned Kelly
turned from horse thief to police killer.
(gun fires)
Kelly claimed he killed Constable Lonigan
only in self-defense with a single shot.
(dramatic music)
Roger and Adam have come to the Victoria Police
forensic lab to test Kelly's story.
(tense music)
- His story is that he fired once at Lonigan
because he was in fear of his life
and yet we've got a number of bullet wounds.
- Hmm.
- In him.
So we've got a graze on the right side of the head there.
- [Adam] Yep.
- We've got a through and through shot
of the left arm.
And then we've got the lethal shot,
which is on the inner aspect of the right eye
and that's gone straight into the cranial cavity.
That would drop you very quickly.
- So this is a replica of the gun that Kelly had.
I guess the question is could those wounds
have been inflicted by a single shot fired from this gun?
- It's interesting, because if we look at
McIntyre's memoirs, he says that Kelly had his rifle
loaded with slugs apparently made by cutting
a spherical bullet into quarters.
- Mm-hmm.
- So what we've actually got is a slug here
that we've cut into four
and people suggest that by firing that,
it may break up and you'll get four holes.
(gun firing)
- [Mike] If it is possible for one shot to create
multiple wounds, then Ned Kelly's story could stack up.
Like Kelly's gun, our test gun is an original
sawn-off .577 caliber Enfield rifle.
Over 160 years old, they're notoriously unreliable
and difficult to fire accurately.
(gun fires)
- Blimey!
- That worked.
- Whoa.
Let's have a look.
- Yeah.
- No, doesn't look like it.
- [Roger] No, we didn't hit it.
- We didn't hit it.
Where did it hit?
That's something to look for.
- Ah!
- The back wall.
- [Adam] Oh!
- Two holes.
We're at 40 yards, one hole, two holes
and one in.
So we've got three hole from one shot.
We've got a spacing like that.
- Yeah, yeah.
- On top of the spacing like that.
I don't think we can discount the fact
that you can get multiple holes from one shot.
That's fascinating. - That's really interesting.
- [Roger] Nobody's shown that before.
(gun fires)
- [Mike] So it is possible that Ned Kelly fired one shot,
which would account for three of Lonigan's wounds.
But the autopsy report raises another question.
- We've got this really curious wound
that's described here that goes from the
outer aspect of the left thigh, under the skin,
and stops.
And the doctor who took the bullet out said
it was a revolver bullet and not a rifle bullet.
- [Mike] Could Constable Lonigan have accidentally
shot himself in the thigh?
(gun fires) (tense music)
- (laughs) Well done.
That is not what Dr. Reynolds described.
Yeah.
- Look at that burn.
- Yeah, the amount of soot staining there
and it's gone straight through.
So I think we can safely say
that Lonigan didn't shoot himself.
So therefore, somebody else shot him.
- That's intriguing.
- Hmm.
- So we've made part of Kelly's statement plausible.
- Yeah.
- But this says that he's still holding something back.
- So we've got at least two--
- Two shooters.
- Two guns, two shooters.
(tense music)
- The evidence suggests that Lonigan
was most likely shot as he ran
(gun fires)
by either Kelly or perhaps another.
But it's what Kelly does next
that really challenges his claim of acting in self-defense.
He doesn't flee the scene.
Instead, he takes Constable McIntyre hostage
and lays in wait for half an hour
for the other two policemen to return.
If the first killing wasn't premeditated,
(tense music)
(horse neighing)
then what was Kelly's intention in the second ambush?
And was Sergeant Michael Kennedy killed in an act of mercy
or murder?
(tense music)
(gentle music)
Stringybark Creek, 1878.
The bodies of police officers Lonigan and Scanlon
were found gunned down in their camp.
But their leader, Sergeant Michael Kennedy,
had disappeared.
Ned Kelly later claimed he followed
the mortally wounded father of five
into the bush and shot him as an act of mercy.
But no one knows if that's the truth.
So can the "Lawless" team shed new light
on what actually did happen to Sergeant Kennedy?
(tense music)
Roger is searching for clues to how Michael Kennedy died.
- So what we've got here is we've got Kelly's statement
about what happened with Sergeant Kennedy.
And he says "I shot him in the armpit and
"he dropped his revolver and ran."
(gun fires)
"I fired again with the gun
"as he slowed around to surrender.
"the bullet passed through the right side of his chest
"and he could not live or I would have let him go."
- So in your opinion could Sergeant Kennedy
have survived those wounds?
- I think the problem, Mike, is we don't know
the extent of the injuries.
You can be shot in the chest and survive very easily
or else you can die very quickly.
If Ned had been a reasonable bloke,
surely the thing to do would have been
put Kennedy on a horse and send him back to Mansfield
to give him some chance of survival.
- And yet there are later claims
that Kelly shot him as a mercy killing.
- That's interesting, actually.
We do have Samuel Reynolds, the doctor's testimony.
What Reynolds says is there is a large wound
in the center of the sternum, that's the chest bone,
"which I believe was caused by a charge of shot
"fired at a very short range,
"which passed completely through the body
"and out of the back."
And he says it was a charge of heavy shot.
So a wound like that is something
you can probably put your fist into
that would cause almost immediate death.
(dramatic music)
(gun fires)
- I cannot see that as a mercy killing.
He only made that statement after he'd gone around
and bragged for weeks on end about
he'd blown away the police.
Showing off my great-grandfather's watch as a trophy,
held it up to people and said he took this
from Sergeant Kennedy when he took his life.
I don't think so.
You do not go around after you've stolen
from someone's body, robbed them,
and then claim you've done a mercy killing.
Cannot believe it.
(tense music)
- [Adam] We've only got those two--
- [Leo] Two references.
- [Adam] Two vague references.
- [Mike] Sergeant Michael Kennedy's body was found
by a search party a quarter of a mile
northwest of the police camp.
Now that he knows the camp location,
Adam leads Leo to the place where he believes
Leo's great-grandfather was killed.
- So we've done, you know, about 400 meters, roughly.
- [Leo] Yes.
- And now we've gotta go in this direction.
- [Leo] Till we line up and get the angle right,
so it's actually northwest.
- Absolutely so.
So just come through here, Leo.
(gentle music)
So, Leo, my team have been working for weeks on this task.
Somewhere near where we are standing
is where your great-grandfather was killed.
(tense music)
- Shot through the heart, facing his killer.
Shocking way to go for someone who was so
highly respected and did so much for others.
(gentle music)
- How do you think your family will feel
knowing that this site has been kind of identified?
- I believe my family will get some closure out of this.
They will have a place to come and pay their respects.
Finally.
(dramatic music)
- [Mike] The legend of Ned Kelly still cuts deep
for families of his victims.
As well as stirring equally strong passions
for Kelly fans.
(tattoo needle buzzing)
Roger's seen more than his fair share of dead bodies
and he's published a study showing those with
Ned Kelly tattoos are nearly eight times more likely
than the average forensic case to have been murdered.
(tattoo needle buzzing)
- Most of these, they're all males.
They're in their thirties.
- Right.
- And they've died violent deaths.
Suicides, homicides, accidents.
(tattoo needle buzzing)
So why are you getting a Ned Kelly tattoo?
- I've had a passion for the Kelly story
since about the age of five or six.
(tattoo needle buzzing)
His story still encapsulates the Australian spirit
in the way of mateship, love for family.
(tattoo needle buzzing)
A lot of my own personal story I can relate through
with Ned Kelly's, growing up poor,
of standing against authorities.
I was bullied throughout my primary school
and high school years, so the Kelly story
is what gave me the strength to keep going, you know?
- So you really identify with him?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
(gentle music)
- [Mike] Ned Kelly's stand against authority
has historical echoes.
Kiera's research has led to a unique theory
that may link Kelly to the infamous
rebel gangs of rural Ireland,
men considered heroes by the poor and persecuted.
- These gangs are known as the Whiteboys
and they would use incredible violence
to hold the district in control.
They wanted the Protestants and they wanted
the local authorities out of their district
because they saw these people as corrupt.
They would write these fabulous documents
that are known as threatening notices
and they would describe the kind of violence
that they were gonna perpetrate against these people
in lurid detail:
And if my orders are not obeyed,
I'm coming to get you.
We turn to the Jerilderie letter,
which was written by Ned Kelly,
or dictated by him, actually,
three months after Stringybark.
There's a lot of similarities between
Kelly's Jerilderie letter and
the Whiteboy threatening notices.
It seethes with rage and menace.
Those famous words that we've all heard so many times,
"I am a widow's son, outlawed,
"and my orders must be obeyed."
He may even has seen himself as a Whiteboy,
persecuted, and with that sense of being persecuted,
he would've been like those Whiteboys,
prepared to perpetrate devastating violence.
(guns firing)
- After the killings at Stringybark Creek,
Ned Kelly and his gang are on the run,
robbing banks and evading police for 18 months.
Then, Kelly comes up with a plan
where by his own admission,
he was preparing to commit mass murder.
(birds calling)
18 months after the killings at Stringybark Creek,
Ned Kelly's story comes to a head
(tense music)
when he plans another attack on police at Glenrowan.
(train chugging)
Kelly's plan was to lure a train through here at Glenrowan,
carrying police officers and Aboriginal trackers
on their way to stop him and his gang.
Among the 24 people on board were also journalists
and civilians.
(tense music)
Ned Kelly admitted he forced rail workers
to pull up a section of the track.
His intention?
To derail the train, killing everyone on board.
It was right here where the train was supposed to
crash off the tracks and careen into this ravine.
And had the plan succeeded, we wouldn't be debating
Ned Kelly's hero status.
We'd be talking about one of the most horrific
mass murders in Australia's history.
But that's not what happened.
The train was delayed and the police were tipped off.
The game was up for Ned Kelly and his gang.
- So, Mike, we're in the heart of Glenrowan here
and the Kelly Gang ended up here at the Ann Jones Inn.
- [Mike] Adam knows this site well,
having led a major excavation here in 2008.
And it's here where Kelly was forced to make his last stand
against the police.
- Thus begins this long, protracted and violent siege.
The siege goes on all night.
First light of dawn, this wraith,
this amazing character, comes out of the mist
wearing a full armor and the big long coat
and he goes at this point from being a bushranger
to this substance of legend.
Firing two pistols at the police,
they turn around and start firing at him.
Eventually, he gets shot in the legs
and he falls and collapses
and 50 meters there, Kelly is captured,
the police setting fire to the inn.
This is a photo taken of the last moments
at the time where Dan Kelly and Steve Hart are dying.
You know, look at it now, it just seems so suburban
and yet, you know,
it's one of the most important parts of Australia's history.
- [Mike] Ned Kelly was captured and taken to Melbourne
to stand trial.
But not for the shootout at Glenrowan
or even attempting to derail the train.
On November 11, 1880, Ned Kelly was hanged
for the murder of Constable Lonigan at Stringybark Creek,
claiming it was self-defense till the very end.
(gentle music)
The echoes of the killings at Stringybark Creek
continue to resonate today.
Now, for the first time, the descendants of both
the Kelly and Kennedy families are coming together.
Meeting here at the scene of the crime
to learn what the "Lawless" team have uncovered.
Hey, Leo.
- Hello, Mike, how are you going?
- I'm well, mate, welcome.
- Thank you very much.
- Yeah. - Good to see you again.
- You, too.
How do you feel?
- Feel really good.
- Bit nervous?
- Well, a little bit nervous,
but I'm more excited than anything.
- [Mike] Hi, Anthony.
- How are you going?
- How are you mate?
- Very well.
- Thank you for coming.
Anthony Griffiths, Leo Kennedy.
- Hi, Leo. - Leo, Anthony.
- Hi, Anthony.
How are you going?
- Very well.
- Good to meet you.
- Anthony, how does it feel to be here?
- Well, I always find it very eerie.
Which, we don't come here very often for that exact reason.
Thinking back to what actually took place here
and you think, ooh, gives you shivers.
- [Mike] And to be here with Leo?
- Yeah, it makes it pretty special.
I don't imagine there's many occasions
when the two sides, so to speak,
have been in one spot, at this spot at the same time.
- Yeah.
- It's cast a very long shadow on everyone involved.
- Yes.
And I think that's what a lot of people don't know.
They get a lot of myths and a lot of tourism,
but they don't know impacts on families.
- They forget the fact that all the people involved
are people.
- People, yes.
- Ordinary people.
They're not myths and they're not just in books,
they're people, yeah.
- Yeah and we all care about our families
and we often wonder what was it like
for people on the other side.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
- It's interesting that you two have never met
and yet, just hearing you speak now.
You have so much in common.
Join me, please.
Come along.
- After you.
- [Mike] It's time for the descendants
to meet the "Lawless" team.
We sort of call this our tent headquarters.
Their mission was to try to uncover new evidence
about what really happened here almost 140 years ago.
- Great to meet you.
Look at those Kelly eyes!
Wow, they've got the sparkle.
- [Mike] Key question: Was Ned Kelly acting in
self-defense as he claimed, or was it calculated murder?
(dramatic music)
So, Kiera, you've been researching,
you've been testing, Adam, you've been digging.
What do you think happened?
What have you found?
- Well, the question we started off with was
what really happened?
But before we got to that we had to find out
where it happened,
to pinpoint the exact location
of where this ambush occurred in 1878.
And it's right in front of us,
in amongst all these picnic tables and barbecues.
We've managed to put this mystery to bed
and map, for the first time, the exact movements
of people during this gun battle.
- [Mike] Through LiDAR imaging and Adam's discovery
of the hut, we can now place the police camp here.
Perhaps Kelly had not intended to kill
when he and his gang went in,
but they were clearly armed.
(tense music)
Kelly said he fired a single shot
and killed Constable Lonigan in self-defense.
We discovered one shot from his gun
could have resulted in multiple wounds.
But Lonigan's thigh wound remains a mystery.
But it's what happened next that challenges
any claim of acting in self-defense.
Instead of making a run for it,
Kelly decided to take Constable McIntyre prisoner
and lie in wait for the other policemen.
- Ned Kelly and the boys could have just
melted away into this landscape, but they didn't.
They chose to escalate the situation.
They chose to confront the police.
And so Ned Kelly's later claim
that he fired in self-defense, for me,
doesn't have any credibility.
- [Mike] According to McIntyre's testimony,
Constable Scanlon is killed before he could
draw his weapon.
And as McIntyre flees the scene,
he sees Kelly go after Sergeant Kennedy.
Kelly admitted he shot Sergeant Kennedy
as he ran through the bush.
Any chance for Kennedy to survive the attack
was denied when Kelly chose to fire that final,
fatal shot.
So was this an act of mercy, as Kelly later claimed?
- No matter what way you look at it,
here's a defenseless, unarmed man who's been wounded,
who's shot at pretty close range with a shotgun
through the chest.
To me, that's got the hallmarks of execution.
- Well, execution doesn't ring very well
with anybody, does it?
- [Roger] No.
- But um, I think they are some of the facts
that it's hard to know positively what happened.
There's no doubt Sergeant Kennedy ended up deceased.
That's a fact.
The exact circumstances that led to that,
only the people who were there will ever know
and none of those are here to tell us.
- Kiera, if I can go to you.
Ned Kelly: hero or villain?
- How has he become an Australian legend
when he's murdered three policemen?
And to me, the answer lies in the broader context,
looking at Kelly from his childhood
through to the trial years
and you see a person who could captivate
and who was considered charismatic
as well as unpredictable and violent
and bloody-minded.
And it's that contradiction that makes him
like a kind of rough diamond, full of different dimensions
that you can hold up to the light and see
ever changing, mercurial different sorts of perspectives.
I think he was a villain here,
but he was not always a villain,
and many people saw his actions as heroic.
There were people who lived on the fringes of the law
that felt that he was standing up and a hero for them.
- I don't accept him as being a hero.
I dispute that.
A person who murders people is not a hero,
that's not an example to others
and it's a constant source of wonderment to me
and disappointment that he has got this
supposed hero status.
And I think a lot of it is Australia is looking for heroes.
A lot of people were touched by the acts of four men.
It didn't start here and it hasn't ended here
and that's the sad truth of it.
- The Kelly stone dropped in a big pool
and the ripple spread along wide
and it's had a tragic impact on a whole range of families
on both sides of the debate.
It's nice to see this sort of work going on
to get to the facts.
Because that way there's both a factual debate,
but also a respectful debate,
that everybody can recognize, well, yes,
these things happened and um,
they'll pay their respects, too.
(tense music)
- [Mike] Ned Kelly has come to symbolize bravery,
loyalty, and the epic struggle of the underdog.
Yet, as we examine the evidence,
we can see Australia's most famous outlaw
in a different, clearer light.
And we remember the policemen killed in their line of duty
at Stringybark Creek.
Theirs is the other, almost forgotten side
of this infamous, lawless tale.
(tense music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ You'd kill me in my sleep ♪
♪ Hide behind that policeman's badge ♪
♪ And grip your judge's hand ♪
♪ I'll hunt you down and cut you up ♪
♪ We'll see whose judgment stands ♪