- November 17, 1879.
Outside a town called Wantabadgery, New South Wales,
one of the most violent gunfights
during the bushranging era unfolds.
(guns firing)
Captain Moonlite and his gang are locked in battle
against 10 heavily armed police.
(ominous music)
When it's over, two of the gang are dead,
and Police Constable Edward Webb-Bowen is mortally wounded.
It will be six days before he dies.
Moonlite was hanged for the policeman's murder,
claiming innocence to the end.
(eerie music)
But questions remain.
Did Captain Moonlite fire the fatal shot
that killed Constable Webb-Bowen?
And if he didn't, who did?
(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.
(ominous music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ Yet kill me in my sleep ♪
♪ 'Twas you who loosed the dogs of war ♪
♪ Setting flame akeep ♪
♪ 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 ♪
- Captain Moonlite's real name was Andrew George Scott,
and he was a complex and fascinating character.
Certainly not your typical outlaw.
Well educated, well dressed, a lay preacher,
charismatic, and with high ranking friends.
On the other hand, he was a conman, a liar,
reckless, and vain.
Some say he was even insane.
But whatever demons drove Scott,
it was along this very road
that the gentleman bushranger, Scott,
became Captain Moonlite, the notorious bushranger.
1879 is the same time Ned Kelly and his gang
are on the loose in Victoria.
Their murderous exploits spreading fear
throughout the colonies.
Police are demanding government action and police protection
from the so-called dangerous bushranger menace.
But Moonlite and his motley crew of five
are far from your classy bushrangers.
James Nesbitt and Thomas Rogan
are small time street hustlers,
Thomas Williams has no criminal record,
Graham Bennet is a piano playing drifter,
and Gus Wreneckie is a 15 year old runaway.
They've walked 500 kilometers from Melbourne.
Broke and starving, a violent gunfight with police
is the last thing on their minds.
Wantabadgery is a small farming community
in southern New South Wales,
just over halfway between Melbourne and Sydney.
Almost 140 years ago, the Moonlite Gang's
bloody shootout with police
took place in an unmarked corner of this paddock.
(dramatic music) (guns firing)
The story goes that around 150 shots
were exchanged in the chaos.
Of the gang members, only Thomas Rogan stayed out of it,
hiding under a bed.
(guns firing) (dramatic music)
By the end, the youngest bushranger
Gus Wreneckie is bleeding to death.
Moonlite's closest friend, James Nesbitt is dead
from a bullet in his head.
And Constable Webb-Bowen is fighting for his life.
(somber music)
Now, the Lawless team has arrived to investigate
whether Moonlite really was guilty of Webb-Bowen's murder.
They set up their headquarters
in the local Wantabadgery Hall.
Archeologist Adam Ford has unearthed mysteries
all round the world.
Professor Roger Byard is one of the country's
leading forensic pathologists.
And historian Dr. Kiera Lindsey
is a scholar of Australian colonial history.
All here to examine the evidence and plan their strategy.
Okay for you guys, what have we got?
- Well I've got these absolutely fantastic
newspaper accounts, and I've also got prison records,
court records, some mugshots.
It's just a great pile of things to discover.
- And Roger?
- Well the big question for me really is you know,
who shot Constable Webb-Bowen?
And we do have court transcripts and autopsy reports,
and so they describe the fatal bullet,
and I think that's a very good start.
- For me, the by far the most important
crucial piece of evidence is missing,
which is the sketch plan
that was done by the surveyors for the court case
that identified accurately the location of the buildings
and the location of the bushrangers and the police
and how they moved during the gun battle.
People have been looking for it for years, can't find it.
It's in the wind, it's gone.
And all we have are some
artists' impressions of the shootout.
- So for each of you, what are the key questions here, Adam?
- The first one is did Captain Moonlite
fire the fatal shot that killed Edward Webb-Bowen?
- And if he didn't shoot the constable, who did?
- Well I've got two questions.
So the first is did Moonlite get a fair trial?
There's a lot of conjecture that he didn't,
and if not, why didn't he get a fair trial?
And the second question is, who is Moonlite?
He's educated, he's charming, he's witty,
he's well-connected, he's a gentleman.
So how does his life end up in this bloody mess?
- After the Wantabadgery shootout,
Moonlite becomes known as a bloodthirsty killer.
His extended family in Australia flees to New Zealand
to avoid the publicity and shame.
87 year old Biddy Orr has only recently discovered
that her great grandfather was Moonlite's cousin.
So, she's come from New Zealand
to be close to the investigation.
How did your relatives react
when they realized that they were
related to Captain Moonlite?
- I think they were a little bit astounded.
They would have felt it was
a terrible slur on the family.
You know, a skeleton in the family cupboard,
and I don't think people wanted to
talk about skeletons in the cupboard.
- So Biddy, once you learned you're related to
someone so infamous, how did you feel about that?
- Well I guess quite protective.
I guess blood is thicker than water.
I just wonder that he had two sides to him.
The chivalrous side, and a nasty, mischievous side
rather like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
It's really hard to get to the truth,
so he still is an enigma.
- Andrew George Scott.
So he starts off here as a well-dressed,
well-groomed gentleman full of pride and colonial ambition.
A civil engineer with military training,
and an impressive gift of the gab.
But there's a turning point in his life.
In his early twenties, his ruin begins
when he's linked with a bank robbery.
The culprit, apparently disguised,
leaves a note signed Captain Moonlite.
Now no one is convicted,
but a lot of suspicion falls on Scott.
He embarks upon a career as a conman,
and is soon imprisoned for fraud.
After his release, the police discover that Moonlite
has sold gold from the bank robbery,
and he's arrested again.
He's sent to Victoria's notorious
Pentridge Prison for seven years.
It is a transformative experience.
He forms a lifelong friendship
with a fellow inmate, James Nesbitt,
and when they are released
he embarks upon yet another career.
This time, as a public speaker, Captain Moonlite,
lecturing on prison reform.
These lectures infuriate the authorities,
and they pressure venues to cancel his performances
and shut him down.
Both the police and the press begin to accuse Moonlite
of any crime that is happening in Victoria.
It's preposterous, but it's also harassment.
Scott is now penniless and embittered, a social pariah,
and he begins to dream of a new beginning
across the border in New South Wales.
- Moonlite and his followers are not alone on the road.
The gold rushes are over, and chronic unemployment
in the cities sees thousands of men
leave Victoria looking for work.
But Moonlite has heard that
the owner of Wantabadgery Station
looks kindly on itinerant workers.
Exhausted, cold, and starving,
they arrive here at Wantabadgery Station.
They're expecting a bit of relief
after such an arduous journey.
But that's the last thing they get.
(thunder rumbles)
Wantabadgery Station has changed hands,
and the new manager has a different attitude
to penniless drifters.
(door creaks)
Moonlite and his men are not welcome.
(thunder rumbles) (rain patters)
Moonlite is humiliated, and the decisions he makes here
will end in disaster.
(thunder rumbles)
(somber music)
I've come to Sydney to meet two people
who have their own special connections
to the Moonlite story.
Narelle. - Hello Mike.
- I'm Mike Munro, how are you? - Nice to meet you.
Narelle Muldoon is the great great niece
of Constable Edward Webb-Bowen.
- Sit down. - Thank you.
And New South Wales police inspector Stephen Radford
has led a police project to honor Webb-Bowen's memory.
Narelle, your great great aunt Marion
was Constable Webb-Bowen's widow.
What are your impressions of him?
- That he was a very good man,
and a very upstanding man and a good man in the community
and a good husband, and she adored him
and it was just a tragic event that he died.
It led her life down a different path
that wouldn't have occurred before.
- [Mike] It was a tragic life she had afterwards.
- That's right, very tragic.
- I mean she was left penniless,
mother of a three year old, single mum.
Turned to alcoholism, didn't she?
- That's right, yes.
- Stephen, what is your personal take on him?
- In our local area, every pub you go into
there's pictures of the bushrangers,
whereas the police like Bowen that were killed,
there's very little to remember them
other than an unknown sort of grave site
known only to local historians.
So that was the thing that popular culture
of seeing the bushrangers as chivalrous, caring,
robbing from the rich, giving to the poor.
The reality is they were cop killers,
and they were then and they should be seen as that now.
- I think for me it was important to remember
that there's not just victims of the police officers,
but the families that are left behind
when these tragedies occur.
(somber music)
- [Mike] Finding out exactly how
Constable Webb-Bowen was killed
is the challenge facing the Lawless team.
Adam begins the first ever
full scientific investigation of the shootout site
using a terrestrial laser scanner.
- The reason we're using
this cutting edge scanning technology
is that it'll show us the location of the buildings,
and will help us to identify the movements
of the people during the gun battle,
and hopefully we'll be able to determine who was able,
or who wasn't able, to shoot Edward Webb-Bowen.
So that unit on top of the tripod there
does a rotation of 360 degrees in about 10 or 15 minutes.
And during that time, it scans millions of points
across the surface of the ground.
And Jeremy will take that data later,
and create a very accurate 3D model of our site.
- Can we use cutting edge science
to recreate the shootout, and determine once and for all
if Captain Moonlite is guilty
of the murder that sent him to the gallows?
(gentle music)
This unmarked corner of country New South Wales
is where bushranger Captain Moonlite and his gang
made their last stand against a squad of policemen.
And Constable Edward Webb-Bowen
was fatally shot right here,
and Moonlite went to the gallows for it
and right up to his death,
Moonlite always maintained his innocence.
And now, almost 140 years later,
can the Lawless team, first of all
reconstruct the crime scene,
and then discover what really happened here?
(somber music) (guns firing)
Hey Adam, how's it going?
- [Adam] Yeah it's going really well.
This is always a great bit
when we're first starting off again.
- [Mike] Adam's physical inspection of the shootout site
has led him to target areas where his team
can begin digging.
- [Adam] Just looking at these.
- [Mike] And this dramatic newspaper sketch of the event
is proving important.
- We've got these hills in the background,
which are really really good
because they match the hills behind us here.
So I think we're in the right part of the landscape.
But it also shows these crucial features
which are the two buildings
that are always referred to in the testimony.
So you've got the kitchen and McGelede's homestead.
- Because the kitchen's important, isn't it?
- It is, it's kind of crucial to the whole thing actually.
We know that Moonlite was moving in and out of the kitchen,
and also three other members of his group were there.
Then we've got Bennet, Williams,
and Nesbitt who were in there.
Pinpoint that location, we can then infer from this evidence
the location of the homestead.
Find the homestead, we've got Rogan under the bed
and then we can also make measurements out
to where Webb-Bowen was fatally shot.
- The policeman.
- So this chimney here, the kitchen,
I'm hoping is what the guys are digging now.
So I think we're on the money there,
and we've got Bob and John over there.
They're working on the metal detector,
because it's a battle site
and 150 odd rounds were fired.
So we're gonna be looking for projectiles
and for the cartridges,
so we've got the best chance that anyone has ever had
of solving this mystery and mapping the site.
- So far so good. - Yeah.
- [Mike] The court documents from Moonlite's trial
reveal insights into the actual guns
fired during the shootout.
Police witnesses swear he was firing a Snider rifle.
- At the inquest, Dr. McKillop said that
the bullet that he got out of Constable Webb-Bowen's neck
was actually from a Snider.
- So that would support what the police had said.
- That's right, and Moonlite was known
to be pointing his rifle after Webb-Bowen,
so it fitted perfectly,
but two weeks later, Dr. McKillop then said
actually I've had a chance to look at the slug
and it's not a Snider, it's a Colt.
- Really, okay.
- And he thought it was a small Colt.
And also there was an opinion from a gunmaker, Peter Burns,
who said that basically he thought
that it came from a small Colt.
- Is there any other supporting witness account
or other bit of evidence to support this gun?
- Well, there's one witness
who was actually shown to be quite reliable in this respect.
It was Moonlite himself.
- Oh.
- Moonlite always maintained he saw who did the shot,
and he said that it came from a small Colt,
and he said that before the doctor
had actually examined the projectile
and said actually it is a small Colt.
- So he knew who fired the shot.
- Indeed.
- Why didn't he say, why did he
go to the gallows without letting on?
- I'm not an informer.
He was being loyal to his men.
- This is really interesting. - It is, isn't it?
(suspenseful music)
- [Mike] So did Moonlite really see who fired the shot
that killed the policeman?
And can the team find any evidence to support his story?
- What have you got there?
- It's pretty soft, soft ground isn't it?
Ooh, ah what's that?
Mmm. - Look at that.
- Hey Adam!
Come and have a look at this, mate.
- What do we got?
Oh, hello.
- [Man] That's good eh?
- That is fantastic, guys.
'Cause you know what that is? - No.
- That is a Martini-Henry cartridge.
- [Man] You're joking.
- [Adam] See the foil how it's all folded over there?
That's perfect for the period of this crime.
- [Man] And it's in the right spot.
- [Adam] Mike?
- [Mike] What have you got?
- That.
- It's a shotty.
- No, it's not a shotty.
- Isn't it, what is it?
- It's a Martini-Henry cartridge.
Martini-Henry rifles were the government rifles of the day,
and I'm almost definitely sure
that that came from one of the police rifles.
That's unequivocal, I reckon,
evidence we're on the right spot.
- It's a wonderful find.
(guns firing) (somber music)
As pieces begin to fall into place at the site,
Roger's analysis of Constable Webb-Bowen's autopsy
has brought him closer to identifying the killer.
- We know that he was shot in the left side of the neck,
so it came through the soft tissues,
it hit the vertebrae there,
but then it kept going and it finished up in the muscles
on the right side of his neck.
So it only went quite a short distance.
- So not a very large bullet.
- It's not a large bullet, it's not a high powered weapon,
and he didn't die immediately.
He took six days to die, probably of infection.
So he had this suppurating wound,
so it wasn't a very nice way to die.
We don't actually have the bullet,
but we do have a very good description by Dr. McKillop
who said that it was a conical shaped bullet,
and it weighed about 74 grains.
So effectively it's about that size.
- That's tiny, isn't it?
- [Roger] Yeah, yeah it's not a big bullet.
- [Mike] So what's the next step, Roger?
- Well Mike, if we can find the gun that fired that,
we'll be able to find the murder weapon.
- [Mike] And who shot it.
(dramatic music)
We're only two days into the dig,
and the archeology team has already uncovered
an extraordinary treasure trove
of new evidence from the gunfight.
- Well look at what we've found, Mike.
This is the battle.
What we're looking for.
- These are all bullets.
- Bullets and cartridges.
So up here are four fragments
of Martini-Henry rifle cartridges.
And they're perfect, because they all date to that era.
- So the police would have been shooting these.
- That's right.
Now we've got a mixture of other
deformed pieces of lead, or squashed lead.
Some of them are heavier than others,
so some of them like this
could have come from say a .36 Colt revolver.
So the police had .36 Colts,
and then the smaller pieces again.
And these could have come from a .31 Colt,
which we know that the bushrangers also had.
So we have the evidence of the battle.
That's fantastic.
That's so important.
- [Mike] But Adam needs to find the all important buildings
that were on the site.
The missing pieces to the whole reconstruction of the event.
- What we need to do is we need to establish
whether it was the kitchen,
and kind of what size it is, or what orientation it was.
So what we have is a fireplace,
but it's not just an ordinary one.
This is where people were cooking.
You've got this iron that would have been
suspended over the hearth.
- For the cooking pot.
This is the front wall.
This is the wall that would have been
facing the police as they approached,
so this is definitely
the kitchen.
Mike, come and have a look at this.
Now this doesn't really look very inspiring, this trench.
Not as much as that one over there,
but it is really important.
If you look at this feature that runs along here,
there's a discoloration in the soil
and there's nails and there's bits of burnt charcoal.
Well these are the foundation remains of the floor joists
that would have held the floorboards of the homesteads.
So if you follow me through the back of the building,
into the breezeway that runs between the two structures,
we can look at their relationship to each other.
So we have the archeological remains of the kitchen,
and here in front of us we have
the archeological remains of the homestead,
and we've kind of taped it out as best we can.
So that means we've got the ground plan now
that we can map the whole battle site.
- Which will allow us to work out
who was standing where,
and more importantly, who shot who.
- Well those are the pivotal questions,
and we could answer those now.
(birds squawking)
- [Mike] But there's still a missing piece of the puzzle.
The gun, which was the murder weapon.
With some help from the Victoria police forensic team,
Roger is closing in on linking the bullet,
which killed Constable Webb-Bowen,
to a gun at the scene.
- We have two revolvers here, both Colts.
And the one above is the .36 caliber.
And it fires a bullet weighing 141 grains,
and it's of the type issued to the New South Wales Police.
- Okay, so that's double what we're looking for.
- The bullet taken from Webb-Bowen's body
weighed only 74 grains.
And this one?
- And this one is a .31 caliber,
and that fires a smaller 79 grain bullet.
- [Mike] And used by who?
- That would have been used by the bushrangers.
- Now this is more like it.
I mean it's 79 grains.
We're looking at 74, but you gotta remember
that the bullet that the doctor
took out of Webb-Bowen's neck had gone through bone.
So it's gonna be a smaller size.
That's it.
- So all we've got to do now is work out
just who fired it and killed him.
- [Roger] That's correct.
- The evidence is building.
(gun fires)
Perhaps Moonlite really was telling the truth,
and covering up for one of his young gang members.
If so, which one of them could have fired the fatal shot?
(somber music)
This is what locals call Moonlite Hill.
It was 140 years ago when Captain Moonlite and his men
huddled together here
for another miserable night in the rain.
And it's believed that it was on this hill
that Moonlite made his fateful decision.
A decision which led to a desperate shootout,
the killing of a policeman, and his eventual hanging.
Our Lawless team has established not only
the location of the shootout site,
but scientifically discovered evidence
that suggests it was not Moonlite
who killed the policeman after all.
So if it wasn't Moonlite, who was it?
To find out, we have to start at the beginning.
Wantabadgery Homestead today
is still a working sheep and cattle station,
just as it was when Captain Moonlite arrived that night
looking for work and shelter.
- It would have represented
to Moonlite his respectable past.
It's exactly the sort of place
that he would have been welcomed into
when he was a young lay preacher.
(birds chirping)
Now there he is, he's been knocked back
by the station manager.
He's had to take his motley crew of followers
who have believed in him,
and they've been insulted by this bloke
who's sent them packing with nothing.
And in that wild moment, everything changed.
(thunder rumbles) (rain patters)
- He snapped, didn't he?
- I think so, yeah.
- He'd had enough.
- I think that's exactly what happened.
It's this sort of juxtaposition between the hunger,
the cold, the desperation of life as Captain Moonlite,
and then this, the refinements
that as Andrew George Scott he felt absolutely entitled to.
- [Mike] The day after being turned away,
Moonlite returned to Wantabadgery Station
and held the place up.
He took everyone inside hostage,
and threatened to kill the station manager.
- A man turned up with a beautiful thoroughbred,
and Moonlite liked the look of this beautiful horse,
and he grabbed it by the halter
and the horse was young and skittish,
so it was twisting and turning
and Moonlite shot it, bang, in the head.
There's just so many dimensions to this man, you know?
You think you've got him nailed,
and something else turns up
and he's so mercurial.
One morning he went out and shot two turkeys,
and decides that he's going to have a fine turkey dinner
here in this room.
And he's sitting in here, perhaps in the very seat
that you're in right now,
eating a turkey dinner with the station owner,
regaling him with his wisdoms and intelligence.
Now what happens next?
You feel like Moonlite's lost the plot.
He went down to the Australian Arms Hotel
and took hostages there,
including the two children of the publicans,
and brought them back.
- [Mike] This farcical siege lasted two full days
until news of the missing children
reached police in Wagga Wagga.
Four constables were then sent to investigate.
- And what happens next is a little bit unknown.
There were two different accounts of course.
There's Moonlite's account, which seems to say
just a few shots were fired,
but the police, they tell quite a different story.
Suddenly, Moonlite's using military strategy
to surround all the policemen
with all of the bushrangers
and firing so madly that the policemen
have no choice but to run off, leaving their horses there.
- They were embarrassed.
They made it up, didn't they?
- Well, I think you know,
the only way to stop them looking like fools
was to make Moonlite and his men
look like bloodthirsty bushrangers.
- Which they weren't, I mean they were kids.
- City boys who didn't know
which end of a horse to get onto.
- Even the hostages were laughing, weren't they?
- Right.
- And once they did manage to get on their horses,
and leave here, leave Wantabadgery Station,
it was only a matter of time
before it really did turn serious.
Moonlite's gang took several hours
to ride the three miles to McGlede's farm,
where they stopped for food and water.
It was here that a reinforced party of 10 police
from nearby Wagga Wagga and Gundagai surrounded them.
- When the news came to Gundagai
that the bushrangers were coming,
they left citizens in charge of the town,
they called for volunteers,
they deputized constables there and then on the spot.
Rode there at breakneck speed
knowing they were facing possibly the Kelly Gang
and six armed bushrangers.
And they rode I think 24 miles on their horses
to get to the scene, so you can imagine
riding that in a couple of hours.
Your heart rate would be up,
you'd be tired, your horses would be tired.
And then they came upon these suspected bushrangers
outside McGlede's hut, who started firing at them.
(guns firing) (ominous music)
- [Mike] Now for the first time,
we can recreate what happened amongst the chaos,
and perhaps discover who might have fired that fatal shot.
Adam and Roger are here to see the results
of the laser scanning and archeological investigation.
A first ever full digital reconstruction of the shootout.
- Welcome to CAVE2, the visualization laboratory
here at Monash, and welcome back to the Wantabadgery site.
- I mean this is incredible.
It's like being back at Wantabadgery.
- It's as close as you're gonna get.
It's extremely accurate, and it represents
a three dimensional rendering that these guys
have spent hours doing of the millions of points
that we collected in that TLS survey.
We've got that lovely old elm tree, that huge elm tree
that dominates the site over there.
And in front of us is our tent down in the creek.
And if we can come round this way a little bit Owen,
and maybe out a little?
- I can't believe this.
- Our first point,
which was this pile of brick.
- So that's the one that you thought was a chimney,
but you weren't sure.
- That's right, and that gave us a great lead
to try and find the location of the homestead,
which we thought was in this kind of
flattish area around here,
but to show you properly I want to remove
all this vegetation and all this extraneous data.
- [Roger] Yeah.
- We get this very clear landscape like this.
- [Roger] Good grief.
- So this again is the mound of bricks.
Looking at the archeological data,
we can now draw an outline on this landscape
of the two buildings, which is really important
because it ties everything else together.
All the testimonies of the police,
and the court case evidence.
So can we do that as well Owen, now?
So this is the kitchen,
and this is the outline of the homestead in front of it
and there's about a five meter breezeway between the two.
So now we can add the people
where they're described by the police or where they were.
Could we do that please, Owen?
- Ha, I mean this is incredible.
I mean we know exactly where they were.
- So down here at the bottom,
one of the important characters is Webb-Bowen.
He's lying in this location.
This is where he was shot,
and mortally wounded.
And we've got the rest of the Moonlite Gang here.
So these are our main suspects.
So Owen, could we put the lines of sight in please?
- That is brilliant.
- So what can we do now?
So we've got to whittle that down.
We've got too many suspects really for us.
Well I think we can discount Rogan.
He hid under the bed and stayed under there
for what, day and a half?
- [Roger] Yes.
- So I think we can remove him, Owen?
Now we've got these three guys in the kitchen.
We've got Williams, Nesbitt, and Bennet,
and I think we can remove them
because if we start adding in elevation of the structures,
we've got the kitchen.
- Right.
- And then we've got the homestead.
- Ah.
- These guys can't have seen Webb-Bowen.
They could not have a clear line of shot,
so we can remove those three lines as well.
So if we bring the landscape down
towards eye level, thanks Owen.
So I've left you with two prime suspects.
We've got Moonlite here, he's firing a small Snider rifle.
The bullet from that rifle doesn't match the description
that the doctor gives of the round
that came out of Webb-Bowen's neck.
- [Roger] Yep.
- So that leaves us with poor Gus here.
15 years old, he's been shot in the side,
paralyzed perhaps from the waist down,
grievously injured.
My question to you is, in that condition
was he able to fire off a round at Webb-Bowen?
- Ah, I mean it's an excellent question,
and I think what I have to do now,
you've given me this wonderful scenario.
I've gotta go and I've got to look at
the autopsy reports from both of them,
I've got to do some ballistic testing,
and I've got to put all that together
and I would hope that we can answer that question.
- [Mike] But after nearly 140 years,
can Roger determine the final moments
of Gus Wreneckie's short life?
- If you look at Dr. McKillop's autopsy report,
he talks about this terrible gunshot wound
to the right side.
It's big enough for him to put his finger into.
So what it's done is it's shattered
the ninth rib on this side.
It's pulverized the liver in here,
and then it's gone down into the lumbar vertebrae
and it's shattered those as well,
as well as damaging the spinal cord.
So it's actually paralyzed him.
- From the waist down?
- From the waist down, that's exactly right.
He's lying there, he's bleeding to death, he's paralyzed,
he can't use his legs, but he can use his hands.
And there's no reason he couldn't lift a gun and fire it.
If you look at the positions of Wreneckie
on the left of Constable Webb-Bowen,
Constable Webb-Bowen is shot in the left side of the neck.
Moonlite's over there on the right side,
and the only way that Moonlite could have shot Webb-Bowen
in the left side of the neck
is if Webb-Bowen was actually standing
with his back to the action,
which he wouldn't have been doing.
So I think that leaves us with poor old Gus.
- It looks as if the 15 year old,
perhaps the most inexperienced boy
of the whole group could have been
the killer of Constable Webb-Bowen.
- I think the evidence points to that, yes.
- What a revelation. - Yes.
(somber music)
(gun fires)
- [Mike] If Wreneckie is guilty, Captain Moonlite
may have been wrongly accused of Webb-Bowen's murder.
So was Captain Moonlite innocent as he always claimed?
And did he get a fair trial?
Kiera is meeting with legal historian
Judge Greg Woods to find out.
- So here we are in Darlinghurst Court,
the very place where Moonlite faced justice.
- He was an extraordinary character.
- And an extraordinary trial.
- It was.
- [Mike] The presiding judge was Sir William Windeyer,
a leading light in the New South Wales judiciary,
and a real stickler for legal procedure.
Moonlite's decision to represent himself
at the trial was not well received.
- Once they start their trial,
Windeyer insists on running late into the night
to the point that Scott
eventually collapses from exhaustion.
So how was he able to defend himself?
- Well, he wasn't.
It was unfair, and the judge
was excessively enthusiastic to finish the case.
He was notorious for it.
You shouldn't force an accused person
to be in court defending himself
for 15 hours of a day, it's ridiculous.
- Scott goes further and calls it indecent haste.
What do you think?
- Well, Scott was a very provocative accused.
He used terminology like indecent haste, but he was right
because this was a death penalty case,
and it's really ridiculous
that they should have been forced on
without the opportunity of
having proper time to prepare their case.
- Judge Woods, during the trial,
Scott spent quite a lot of time
trying to identify who shot the fatal shot.
Our evidence points to the person being
one of the bushrangers, the youngest member Wreneckie.
Had we been able to bring that evidence to the 1879 trial,
would it have changed anything?
- No, Scott was the leader.
They were all his men.
He was responsible for what they did.
- [Kiera] He was morally and legally responsible?
- Both.
- On December 11, 1879,
Moonlite and the four surviving members of his gang
were found guilty of murdering Constable Webb-Bowen
and condemned to death.
Because of their youth, 19 year old Thomas Williams
and 20 year old Graham Bennet had their sentences
commuted to life imprisonment.
But as an adult, 22 year old Thomas Rogan,
who'd hidden under the bed during the shootout,
was not so lucky.
On January 20, 1880, he and Moonlite
were hanged at Darlinghurst Jail.
But in his last moments, Moonlite revealed a secret.
A secret that would take
more than a century to come to light.
(gentle music)
(sheep bleating)
Andrew George Scott, Captain Moonlite,
started life with privilege and promise.
But it all went terribly wrong down there at McGlede's farm
after he was accused of fatally shooting a policeman.
What really happened down there 140 years ago?
And what was the secret Captain Moonlite left behind?
(dramatic music)
Moonlite was brought here,
to Gundagai Gaol after the shootout.
Kiera has learned that in the weeks before his death,
Moonlite wrote many letters
explaining his side of the story.
But for some reason, only a few of them were ever delivered.
- There was a conspiracy it seemed
from the prison warden all the way up
to the then premier of New South Wales, Henry Parkes,
to suppress these letters. - Really?
- They thought that they were morally offensive,
and politically dangerous,
and so the letters were kept by Parkes in his own files,
where they remained for over 100 years
until a researcher just stumbled on them.
- [Mike] These letters reveal
a final twist in Moonlite's story.
A surprising insight into his private life.
- And here are the letters.
- Ah yeah.
Had a beautiful hand, hasn't he?
- He really does.
But what I think is amazing about these letters
is that they reveal to us a man who is passionately,
and intensely in love.
And in fact, the person that he was in love with
was one of the members of his gang,
one of the bushrangers who was shot dead
at McGlede's farm, James Nesbitt.
- So are you saying he was gay?
- Well that wouldn't have been
the sort of language that was used then.
- No.
- And I think what's really important actually
is that it reveals Moonlite's capacity
for a deep, enduring, and very loyal love.
And when he found that Nesbitt had been
shot dead at McGlede's farm,
Moonlite lifted him into his arms, cradling him there,
and weeping and kissing his face.
(somber music)
He says at one stage, "Nesbitt and I were united
"by every tie which could bind human friendship.
"We were one in hopes, in heart, and soul,
"and this unity lasted until he died in my arms."
As he walked to the gallows,
he was wearing a lock of Nesbitt's hair
that had been fashioned into a ring.
And his very dying wish, the last letter that he wrote,
Mike, that he wrote an hour before he died,
was to one of Nesbitt's relatives,
and this is what he said.
"My dear Willie, I want to rest in the grave of my friend.
"Gratify this, my last wish."
- "If you can afford."
But these letters never made it to who they were going to?
- [Kiera] No they didn't.
- So his last dying wish was never granted.
- It was denied.
(somber music)
- For the first time, representatives
of both sides of the story are coming together.
They're meeting at the site of the shootout
to learn what the Lawless team has uncovered.
Hey Stephen.
- Hi, how are you?
- [Mike] I'm well mate, I'm well, how are you?
- Good, good to see you again.
- Yeah, you too, you too.
Oh geez, what have you done to yourself?
- I've had my knee fixed.
- So you're on the mend? - On the mend.
- [Mike] Here's Biddy now.
Hey Biddy.
- Hello Mike. - How are you?
- Good, thank you. - Take my arm.
Nice to see you, welcome.
- Nice to see you too. - Yeah.
Come and meet Stephen Radford and speak to Stephen Radford.
Biddy Orr. - Hello.
- Biddy, Stephen.
- Hi Biddy, how are you? - Hello Stephen.
- You've got Mike and I've got some crutches.
- We've got a couple chairs over here for you.
Come on, come and sit down.
The team's mission was to unearth new evidence.
It's time to reveal their findings.
G'day everyone. - Hi guys, how are ya?
- This is Biddy Orr,
and this is Stephen Radford.
- How are you guys? - Hello.
- How wonderful to have you here.
- [Biddy] Really interesting to be here.
- So for Biddy and Steve, what happened Adam?
Let's start with you.
Have you worked out what happened for that chaotic hour?
- The biggest challenge for me was to find
the actual location of these buildings
to map the crime scene.
'Cause if we could do that,
we could repopulate the battle scene.
We could isolate the person who shot Webb-Bowen.
The shooter.
(ominous music)
- [Mike] Adam's discovery of the farm buildings
and digital reconstruction of the shootout
reveal that only two men had clear lines of sight
to Constable Webb-Bowen.
Captain Moonlite and young Gus Wreneckie.
Our investigation revealed
that a bullet from Moonlite's rifle
would not match the bullet which killed Webb-Bowen.
But we discovered the one
from Gus Wreneckie's revolver would.
(somber music)
So how likely is it that 15 year old Gus
was Webb-Bowen's actual killer?
- Gus was out there, he was in the right position.
He was the closest.
He had no experience with handguns,
so what are the odds?
It's a flukey shot.
- Yeah exactly.
- But he was in the right position
and he was close.
- He must have been like a million to one shot, really,
that he hit his mark.
- Well that's a revelation.
Never suspected poor old Gus.
- Well it does seem to me that in this story,
you know the most tragic figures
are the peripheral characters,
and both Tom Rogan and Gus Wreneckie
were buried in unnamed graves.
- Yeah exactly.
- So what you hear today, you believe now
that Captain Moonlite did not shoot Constable Webb-Bowen?
- Yes, yes.
I feel that he was responsible for the tragedy,
but yeah there was a sense of relief that he didn't.
He said he didn't, and with what you found out,
you know he was correct.
- I think Captain Moonlite was you know,
a convicted fraudster.
I don't think I'd trust anything he said then.
He said he knew who killed Bowen.
Whether he did or he didn't, we'll never know.
One thing's for sure, Moonlite and his men
chose to be here.
They chose the circumstances of their death
through their decisions.
The police that came here on the day had no choice.
It was their duty to protect the community.
Bowen was killed as a result.
Was he killed by Moonlite or was he killed by Wreneckie
as our new crime scene analysis suggests,
I'm not gonna say for sure who shot Webb-Bowen.
But they're jointly responsible for his death,
and that's what I stand by.
(somber music)
- [Mike] Well, you've heard it all.
What are your final reflections?
- Sitting here, it really is a mind stopping moment.
And I organize roses to be put on Moonlite's grave
every year on his anniversary,
but now I will also add flowers for Constable Webb-Bowen.
- Thanks for that. - Yep.
I've told the florist in Gundagai.
I will be ringing her, and it'll be two bouquets
to take up to the cemetery at Gundagai.
- That's wonderful. - Okay?
- I'm glad that Bowen can be remembered,
and I think it's really great
that we're remembering him together.
- Yes.
- And to be a part of that's a privilege.
(eerie music)
- 115 years after Moonlite's hanging,
his dying wish to be buried alongside
his companion James Nesbitt here at Gundagai Cemetery
was finally granted.
His heartfelt letters convinced some locals
that he deserved a fair go.
So they arranged for his remains to be exhumed
and transported here, close to the man he loved.
Ironically, the grave of Constable Edward Webb-Bowen,
the policeman killed in the shootout, is also close by
with an impressive monument in his honor.
You know, Captain Moonlite challenges our mythic image
of the tough Australian bushranger.
In many ways, the real man, Andrew George Scott,
was an accidental bushranger.
A wannabe gentleman, a charismatic lay preacher
fallen from grace, a conman
who may also be our first known gay bushranger.
When called to account,
he paid for his actions with his life.
He was a lawless man of so many contradictions
living in a time of tough justice.
(somber music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ Yet 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 ♪