(foreboding music)
- Easter Sunday, 1902, in remote bushland
in Queensland's Carnarvon Ranges,
at a time when the bushranger period is all but over.
(bird squawking)
A policeman and a civilian are murdered,
their bodies mutilated and burned
in one of the the grisliest crimes in the state's history.
Suspicion falls on the region's most notorious
horse and cattle thieves, the three Kenniff brothers
and their elderly father.
And it's the eldest brother, Patrick Kenniff,
who is sent to the gallows,
proclaiming to the end that he's an innocent man.
(rope snapping)
Our nation's history is etched with bushranger tales.
But this story is personal.
Munro is not my real surname,
it's Kenniff.
Patrick Kenniff was my great uncle,
and for years I've wanted to know if Patrick was innocent
as he always claimed,
or just a cold blooded killer
who some say deserved to hang.
So come with me and a team of experts
as we try to unearth the truth behind my ancestors,
the last Australian bushrangers.
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ Yet kill me in my sleep ♪
♪ Twas you who loosed the dogs of war ♪
♪ Setting flame I'll keep ♪
♪ Hide behind the 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)
- My mum would always say to me
"you're only from a family of murderers and bushrangers,"
and as a kid I had no idea what she was talking about.
Mum and Dad were estranged and I thought she was just
having another go at my father's family.
And it wasn't till I was in my 30s
that I realized it was true.
My father sat me down and told me
the story of the Kenniffs.
A story that had been a shameful secret
in the family up until this point for 80 years.
I had two great-uncles who were charged
and convicted of killing a policeman,
Constable George Doyle,
and a station manager, Albert Dahlke, in 1902.
The journalist in me thought
"Wow, this is worth investigating,
"this is worth looking at."
This has consumed me for 25 years.
It's like discovering that you're not who you really are,
it's like discovering that you've got this
whole different secret life.
The story of my bushranger ancestors
takes place in the mountainous region
of South Central Queensland,
750 km North West of Brisbane.
In 1902 it was a lawless frontier.
Today it's an isolated national park.
And these are the Carnarvon ranges,
and they're breathtaking.
They're bold and they're beautiful.
And you really have to come here to realize
just how wild and isolated they are.
It's also cattle country, always has been,
except no fences.
And ever since the murders of Doyle and Dahlke,
just down there,
this whole region has always been called Kenniff country.
The story of the Kenniffs was one of the most notorious
in Queensland colonial history.
It dominated the newspapers of the time.
The public outraged with the tale of horror
and so many unanswered questions.
This lonely area is called Lethbridge's Pocket,
and it's where I'll join the "Lawless" team of experts.
Archeologist Adam Ford has unearthed
mysteries all round the world.
Historian, Dr Kiera Lindsey, is a scholar
of Australian colonial history,
and Professor Roger Byard is one of the country's
leading forensic pathologists.
Together they've arrived here to find out what happened
over 115 years ago.
The Pocket was well known to the Kenniffs,
it's tucked away amongst steep hills,
the perfect place to hide stolen cattle and horses,
and perhaps too, the perfect place to commit murder.
- Eight o'clock in the morning,
Easter Sunday 1902.
We know that Queensland is part
of a newly federated nation,
and that nation is really keen to get rid
of it's convict stain once and for all,
and to become the most modern society.
But out here in the wilderness,
it's still a lawless frontier.
- [Mike] The three brothers, Patrick, Jimmy and Tom,
were known cattle rustlers and horse thieves,
and they were led by their father, Old Man Kenniff.
The area's huge cattle stations provided easy pickings,
and their thieving became more and more brazen.
Standing in their way was Albert Dahlke,
the tough-minded manager
of the region's largest station, Carnarvon,
and Constable George Doyle, a respected policeman
with specific orders to stop the Kenniffs.
The story is, the police were sent here
to arrest the Kenniffs for horse theft.
Aboriginal tracker Sam Johnson is following their tracks.
Constable Doyle is in charge
and carries the only weapon,
and Dahlke, an unarmed civilian,
is along for support.
When the Kenniff brothers realize they've been spotted,
Patrick and Tom take off in a different direction,
Jimmy heads off alone.
But the police party catches up with him
and he's taken into custody.
When Sam the tracker returns to the pack horse
to fetch handcuffs, that's when it happens.
(gun firing)
He hears the sound of gun shots.
Crucially he looks back but sees nothing.
- This is actually where it gets really interesting,
because nobody actually saw what happened next,
they only heard it.
So Sam Johnson is not an eye witness,
he's an ear witness.
- [Mike] Sam later says the next thing he sees
is Patrick and Jimmy Kenniff galloping
flat out towards him, and he bolts for his life.
(ominous music)
Four days later a police search party arrives in the area,
and comes across a horse which is identified
as belonging to Constable Doyle.
The reins, breast plate and bridle are all police issue.
But curiously, two large pack bags
have been thrown over the saddle.
Inside are human bones, burned flesh and ash,
and some small personal items which confirm
these are the mortal remains of Doyle and Dahlke.
(horse neighing)
(expectant music)
I've come to Brisbane to meet with two people
who had a life-long interest in the story,
Meryl Campbell and her sister Norma Jurss
are the great nieces of the murdered policeman.
So Constable Doyle was your great-uncle?
- Great Uncle, yes. - That's right.
- As the Kenniffs were my great-uncles.
- That's right.
- Constable Doyle was a thoroughly decent,
professional, capable policeman.
- Yeah, that's right, that's what we were
always told - that's what we were told.
- [Mike] Tell us the reaction from the family
over those terrible murders.
Well, it devastated the family,
it really devastated the parents.
- His mother, she carried his watch chain
or watch, maybe both, in her apron
until the day she died.
- [Mike] Oh, really?
- Yeah.
- I feel the family didn't have closure,
they couldn't go to a grave and mourn
and I'm not even aware that they were at the funeral,
if you could call it a funeral,
when the remains were put in there.
Our dad, he always said that the Kenniffs
were murdering bastards, yeah.
- [Mike] I think he was right.
- Yeah, but we don't know whether the right one was hung.
I don't know about Norma but I don't sort of feel
bitterness or anything like that,
but I would like to find out exactly who did it.
- And that would help you?
- [Meryl] Yes it would.
- Mmm, mmm.
(melancholy music)
Almost two weeks after Doyle and Dahlke's murders,
the police arrived here and found remnants of a huge fire.
Also, bits of bone, cloth and blood.
This was where Doyle and Dahlke's bodies
had been incinerated
and the remains stuffed into pack bags.
Now, the "Lawless" team are here
searching for new evidence.
- This is fantastic, I mean seriously,
if I was going to get rid of some bodies
this is the perfect place to do it.
It's wonderful, you've got these natural little crevices
that would have been dry so it sort of forms an oven,
you've got as much kindling as you want,
I mean, look at it.
We were thinking
"How could they possibly get enough firewood?"
It's all round here.
- You know I keep thinking about the fact
that it's Easter Sunday,
and while the rest of the nation is at church,
there's people here involved in this horrendous
act of desecration.
You know before this moment,
the Kenniffs were just cattle thieves.
But it's what they do here that puts them in the papers,
turns this into a huge case
and eventually puts them in the history books.
It's here that they become ghoulish psychopaths really.
- This phase of the story is so dark,
it's so out of, seemingly their character,
that it's just a mystery to me.
(ominous music)
- This is Lethbridge's Pocket now,
and you can see the Lethbridge Creek running through here,
and these are the hills that we can see.
Now this is a reproduction of a plan that was created
specifically for the Kenniff trial.
It was drawn by a surveyor called George Blakeney.
Blakeney came out here in July 1902,
and he marked on this map pretty much everything
in relation to the event.
And what I've done I've reproduced Blakeney's map
and enlarged it so we can overlay it over
this high-res digital photograph that we've created.
No-one has investigated this area archeologically,
so I think if we dig deep we've got a really good chance
of finding some clues about this place.
- That's really exciting.
(mysterious music)
- So the stake in front of us here marks the spot
where Dahlke and Doyle were last seen by Sam Johnson.
A tree grew here originally and this photo,
now you'd better crouch down 'cause I think
it was actually taken with a, like a box Brownie
so it's quite low,
this photo shows the tree in this spot
and you can see that the locals carved a cross
into the side of it as a commemorative
gesture for the event.
Now the tree obviously is long gone
but I'm pretty sure that we're in the right location
and that's where we should start looking.
- And this is really where Constable Doyle
and Albert Dahlke were last seen alive?
- That's right
- Allegedly.
Is that, why do you say allegedly?
- Well, because we're relying on Sam Johnson's evidence.
- And you're skeptical about his evidence?
- Well, I think, yes I am, very skeptical about it,
and he's the only person who's evidence we've got
for this whole trial.
- Uh huh.
- So for me as an archeologist,
if we can find something that we can link
to the players, to the guns, to whatever the story is,
here, then that's gotta say something
about Sam's testimony doesn't it?
- [Mike] That's correct, true.
- So potentially Adam, you just have to find the evidence.
- Well, yeah. - Easy peasy.
- What could-- - It's all up to you Adam.
- How difficult could it be to find a tiny piece
of evidence in this landscape 114 years later?
- That's what you do.
- Well, I'll do my best.
- [Mike] So can the "Lawless" team uncover
any new evidence?
Can they shed light on what really happened
right here back in 1902?
(upbeat music)
It's now been over 100 years since my great uncles
Paddy and Jimmy Kenniff were convicted
of the brutal double murder here in the remote
Carnarvon Ranges in central Queensland.
So I've come here first of all to discover what happened
but also to try and work out why a pair of cattle rustlers
and horse thieves suddenly become the perpetrators
of one of the grisliest crimes in Queensland history.
We've begun a forensic search of the crime scene
based on information from an old hand drawn map.
- So we know that Constable Millard arrived here
with a search party about four days after the shootings.
And he testifies that he dug into a tree
with his pocket knife and searched the ground around
for bullets but he found nothing.
But he didn't have the technology that we've got.
Bob over there is using a Minelab metal detector
that's one of our most powerful archeological tools.
It's not only able to detect and identify
different types of metal,
but it also tells us how deeply they are buried.
So the upshot is, if there's a bullet in that landscape,
I reckon we're gonna find it.
- [Mike] At the far end of Lethbridge's Pocket,
the old map makes an intriguing reference.
Old Kenniff was Paddy and Jimmy's father.
The camp is where the three brothers and their father
were all living at the time of the murders.
And they would have always camped by rivers?
- [Kiera] Well they needed the water for cleaning
and for cooking, and Paddy and Jim
are kind of coming in and out, you know?
- [Mike] Cattle duffing and horse stealing.
- [Kiera] That's it.
- [Mike] They came from Tipperary.
- [Kiera] Well if you came from Tipperary
in the 19th century you basically came from the worst
place in the whole of Ireland.
It was about as bad as it gets.
If you were Roman Catholic you were tight kinships,
you hated the authorities and you loved
getting away with breaking the law
- Yeah, well look going through our family,
the Kenniffs who became Munros would always say
"whatever you do you never dob on anyone,
"you never ever dob on anyone
"and certainly, above all, you'd never wanna be a copper."
In 1897 Old Man Kenniff and his sons
had leased a small property called Ralph Block,
and began stealing and rebranding cattle and horses
from their much larger neighbors.
In less than three years,
they'd grabbed more than a thousand head.
The owners of Carnarvon Station brought in Albert Dahlke
to put a stop to it.
Then in 1899 under pressure from the big land holders,
the authorities canceled the Kenniff's lease
and evicted them.
Then came first the police, with the police station,
the portable police station,
right on the site of the Kenniff's house.
- For the Irish, they would have just been seeing red,
fuming, bubbling.
So they're chucked off Ralph Block,
the police station's there, Dahlke's after them
and they're living here for a couple of years.
Sleeping on what, a bed of leaves
and under a bit of a canvas tarpaulin or something--
- Yeah, a hard life.
- It's pretty bloody basic.
This stage, I reckon, the Kenniffs are down here
living in these desperate conditions,
with their family, off their block,
their options are shrinking,
the world is kind of closing in,
and the law is right on their tails.
(ominous music)
- It's exciting being in this country,
and the longer I'm here the more connected I feel
to the stories it can tell.
When the secret of the Kenniffs was first revealed
to me by my dying father,
he fired me up about how the whole family
could just disappear off the face of the earth.
He told me about a hide-out where they could
just vanish into thin air when being
hunted down by police.
Well, I am standing right on top of it,
and you can't see a thing.
These days it's a restricted area,
out of bounds and closed to the public
because of the danger of cave-ins.
There it is, Kenniff cave.
Not only a hide-out but a cave that leads
to an underground system with multiple escape routes.
When I was a young reporter, when my father told me,
they were the hole in the wall gang,
they were the gang that could escape from the police
any time they liked because they had this almost
magical spot where they could disappear
and no-one would ever find them.
(ominous music)
(metal detector bleeping)
- [Bob] Yep, something down under here mate.
(metal detector bleeping)
- I think that might be it there mate.
- Fence wire, the curse isn't it?
- [Bob] Yeah it is.
- [Adam] False alarm, never mind.
- (inspiring music)
- [Mike] Back in 1902, my great-uncles,
Paddy and Jimmy Kenniff,
were condemned to death on the word of a single witness,
the police tracker Sam Johnson.
- I think we need to test some aspects of his story.
For instance his testimony about the gun shots,
and specifically their loudness.
'Cause he states that he's traveling back
to the handcuffs and he hears the first shot about here,
and then when he's at the pack horses getting the handcuffs
he hears four more, bang bang bang bang.
And he swears blind that those shots, five in all,
didn't come from Doyle's police issue
service Webley revolver, that .442 revolver,
but they came from the Kenniff's guns instead.
- You're not sure, even on the loudness of the shots?
- I think this is something we can really test.
We know the distance, 'cause the distance between
where the shots were fired here at the murder scene
and where Sam Johnson claims he was is about 200 yards.
What we'll do is, we'll set the distance
and we'll use police ballistic analysis
to measure the actual loudness of different weapons,
of the Colt .45 for instance,
or the Webley .442, and see if there is any difference.
(guns firing)
- [Mike] We're testing the different weapons
with members of the Victoria Police Forensic Science team.
Roger is working with their ballistics unit.
We'll fire the three guns we believe
were at the murder scene.
The Kenniff's Winchester .44 rifle,
Constable Doyle's Webley .442 revolver,
and the Kenniff's Colt .45.
And we're firing live ammunition under strict supervision.
- Mike, can you hear me?
- Yeah, Roger, we're up here with Paul and his device,
all ready when you are.
- So what we're gonna do is,
we've got the three weapons here,
we're gonna fire three shots from each one
to see if you can pick a difference in the sound.
(gun firing)
- So those three shots, what do they tell you at this stage?
- There's good consistency between the levels
of the three tests.
- Okay Mike, the next one's Constable Doyle's Webley,
the .442.
- [Mike] The gun Sam Johnson said was not
as loud as the others.
(gun firing)
Yeah that sounded a little bit softer
than the Winchester to my naked ear
but really they sound very similar.
(gun firing)
- That's it Mike, that was the Colt's,
I'm coming up to see what the results are.
Well, it was pretty loud down there
so what've you got here?
- [Paul] The Winchester was the loudest,
averaging about 89dB,
the Webley was then the second loudest
being around about 86,
and the quietest was the Colt averaging around about 82dB.
- The Winchester and the Webley
are pretty similar aren't they?
- They are, they're quite similar.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Which means that when Sam Johnson gave evidence
saying that the Kenniff gun or guns were the loudest
he was either mistaken or didn't hear correctly or--
- Was lying.
- Or was lying.
- Yeah.
- Because the Webley, the police issue Webley,
is certainly the second loudest weapon.
- And, really just behind the Winchester
so I don't think you could really
differentiate between them.
- There's not only doubt but certainly no reasonable doubt.
- You know in a modern court of law,
this just could not be accepted as evidence,
the sad thing really is that back in 1902
that not only was it accepted, and admitted,
but it helped send a man to the gallows.
(intense music)
- [Mike] I've come to meet with barrister
Anthony Morris QC.
His fascination with this case spans two decades,
and he's published a detailed study of the Kenniff's trial.
- I believe that Sam was giving sincere evidence,
but I think he was mistaken.
And, you can understand, he was in a very awkward position.
Remember Mike, this is probably the first case
in the history of English law where an indigenous
man's evidence has sent two white men to the death penalty.
That's pretty serious stuff.
The testimony he gave was of these horses
galloping towards him.
Poor old Sam Johnson had a broken down old nag
from the police yard,
and yet according to his version he managed
to escape from these first rate horsemen
and beat them all the way back to Mitchell
and it just doesn't make sense.
It would make a lot more sense that he heard
some shots fired, turn tailed and scarpered
as soon as he could get out of there.
That doesn't mean Sam was lying,
it just means that he'd convinced himself of something
that we know cannot be true.
(metal detector bleeping)
- [Bob] Well there's a target there.
- [Adam] Yeah.
- [Bob] All right, let's dig it up and have a look.
- [Adam] Mike, can you come over here a bit,
I've got something.
- [Bob] In here mate, put it here.
- I think we're on the money here Bob.
- What've you got?
- [Adam] I've got something I thought you might wanna see.
Look what we've just found.
- [Mike] So it's a cartridge.
- [Adam] And do you see the size of it?
- [Mike] .44?
- You know, look I've just found it so I can't be sure
at this stage but if you look at the distance
from that peg where we know the incident occurred,
this cartridge fits the caliber, it fits the weaponry
that we know that was here.
It's old.
I think that we've got, for the first time,
physical evidence of this event.
- This could be either from Doyle's Webley,
is it a pistol, or a Winchester?
- It's more likely to be a pistol
so it could be from Doyle's Webley.
- This could mean that Constable Doyle
actually fired off a shot.
- It could be, or the gun was taken from him.
- I know we're only speculating but you know--
- But look at the age as well--
- [Mike] Too many coincidences.
- I think we're on the money.
- And maybe the last person to have held this
was either Constable Doyle or one of the Kenniffs.
- [Adam] - Yeah.
- Unbelievable, I never thought we'd find
something like this.
I'm blown away.
Where do we go from here, what do we do with this?
- Initially we've got to do the archeology,
we've gotta bag it, we've gotta tag it,
and get it to someone who knows a lot more than I do.
We've really got to try and find out whether we can
link that cartridge to Constable Doyle's weapon.
If we can do that, then it's a completely different event.
- [Mike] This story is becoming more mysterious
than I'd ever imagined.
(gun firing)
So can we get any closer to finding out
who fired the fatal shots?
(gun firing)
(ominous music)
Over 100 years ago my great-uncles
Paddy and Jimmy Kenniff were convicted
of a brutal double murder,
and some of the grisly remains of the bodies
were found right here at a place today known
as the incineration site.
They claimed they didn't do it,
and while I've always believed a Kenniff
must've been the murderer,
I've always wondered whether Paddy was the real killer.
But as we've traveled through this investigation,
quite frankly I'm having doubts,
because more and more things just don't add up.
I've come to meet someone with a powerful connection
to this whole story.
Bill Lawton is an elder of the local Bidjara people,
who's grandfather often rode with the Kenniffs.
Bill has been holding onto a secret
he wants to share with me for the very first time.
A secret that his father told him.
- So he often told me that they hung the wrong bloke,
he's often said that.
- And who did he think did the murders?
- The elder fellow and Thomas.
- Tom and the old man?
- Tom and the old man.
- Tom and the old man too. - Yeah.
Paddy had nothing to do with it.
Dad said that.
- He said that? - Yeah.
Paddy was innocent in every direction.
- Wasn't even at the shooting?
- No, he was framed.
- So you're saying that old man Jimmy Kenniff
let his eldest son go to the gallows and hang
for something that he--
- Yeah
- and another of his sons did.
- Now you're getting the picture.
- Now I'm getting the picture.
- Now.
- Am I what, am I what?
- The truth needs to be told doesn't it, eh?
And if my dad knew the truth why not bring it out?
- I mean that puts a whole different slant
on the entire trial and ending.
- Yeah.
Yeah well, as Paddy said,
"you're hanging an innocent man aren't ya?"
- I can understand Paddy protecting his father,
I can understand Paddy protecting his--
- Younger brother, not his father
because his father, you know,
in any way he'd think
that he'd done him wrong wouldn't he?
- But I think a lot of sons would probably, you know,
in that blind Irish loyalty,
probably go to the gallows protecting certainly
his younger brother and probably his father.
What I can't understand is the father
standing by...
- And let this happen.
- And let it happen. That's right, absolutely.
You can't understand it and can't condone it.
- That's right.
(melancholy music).
- [Mike] It's been an astonishing day.
I never expected we'd run into so many twists and turns.
- The other thing that's been playing on my mind
the whole time is the brutality,
the method they took to dispose of the bodies.
Just look around you, just look at this landscape,
there's any number of places
where you could get rid of bodies.
- Yeah that's always been the big question mark,
that jump from cattle rustling to horse thieving
to murdering and cutting up and burning bodies.
- Personally I've never come across anything like this.
- A) I don't know why or who would have done it,
and secondly how the hell you'd do it in the first place?
(powerful music)
- The horrific claim that the Kenniff's mutilated
the bodies of Doyle and Dahlke before burning them
has haunted this story from the start.
But it is something we can now investigate.
So what are we doing here?
- What I've got here is I've got two pig carcasses,
we got them from an abbatoir
and we wanna use them as substitutes for human bodies
and that's what we're doing in medical science,
we use pigs to give us answers.
And I'm going to cut it into small pieces,
I'm dismembering it,
and we're gonna put it on the fire
and see how quickly that burns.
And then we've got a whole pig over here
that we've wrapped in material like the clothing
that they were wearing to see how much more slowly
that will burn.
- [Mike] Roger is comparing the two carcasses
to see if it's more likely that the bodies
of the men were burned whole or if they were cut up
and burned in pieces.
- It's difficult to imagine people doing this
to animals let alone humans.
They knew these men as well.
It's very very ghoulish, and it's out of character
and it's just a horrible thing to do.
(ominous music)
- This stuff about the fires is absolutely
gruesome and chilling.
All sorts of rumors are in circulation at this time.
Even the Gympie Times has got a story
about Old Man Kenniff,
who apparently had been boasting that he had also
poured lead or shot down the Aboriginal person's throat.
And then burned the body after he'd murdered him.
But this definitely the most incriminating.
This is George Parker, aka 'The Snob'.
He was in jail with both Jimmy and Pat
in St Helena in 1896.
'The Snob' boasted that he had killed his mate
and then burned him,
and because they couldn't identify the corpse
he was acquitted of this murder.
And it seems that the newspapers are suggesting
that the Kenniffs picked up this technique
and used it in this case.
(powerful music)
(fire crackles)
- So Rachel, as a fire investigator with Victoria Police,
what do you make of this experiment?
- Well basically the experiment is a way of demonstrating
that bodies will be consumed by fire
and can be consumed by fire.
You know bodies will burn at 800 to 1000 degrees,
and you can have a body burn within an hour or so
at those sort of temperatures.
- And what do you think the temperature
would be in that fire?
- Just a normal camp fire can get up to 600 degrees,
a bonfire can get over 1000 degrees,
this because it's like the Lethbridge Pocket fire,
because it's on a cement rock base
is radiating a tremendous amount of heat,
and it's so hot that when you go near it
you actually get a heat rash,
you know, you can't stand by it,
so I would say it's over 1000 degrees.
- [Mike] So Roger, can we compare the two pigs?
- Yeah, if you look at this it's actually answered
the question that we asked this morning.
We've got the carcass over here and we've got
the dismembered pigs here, or bits of pig here.
What we have here is a shoulder blade
and the humerus or upper arm bone.
The important point I think,
is that there's no flesh at all.
- And that's after almost five hours.
- That's right, yeah.
Whereas we go over here to the actual carcass,
pretty much intact on that side, pretty well cooked
and you've got the bones that are breaking down here.
I think what this tells us is that the bodies
were put on the fire whole, like this,
they couldn't have been put on like that
because they would have disintegrated and disappeared.
(ominous music)
(rock thuds)
They looked as if they had been burned whole
taken off the fire and then broken up with the rock
that they found at the scene.
Prosecution were painting these men as ghouls,
who cut up the bodies, the lifeless bodies
of these men that they'd murdered,
and of course the reason they're doing that
is because they want to say to the jury
"if they're capable of cutting up bodies
"they're capable of anything."
- Well, they were certainly desperate
and obviously capable of this.
One of them, or two of them were,
we're not quite sure exactly who,
but a Kenniff or two Kenniffs
were certainly capable of this.
(creepy music)
(fire whooshing).
(upbeat music)
- It's been several weeks since we discovered
the cartridge at the kill site in the Carnarvon Ranges.
Ballistics experts here
at the Victoria Police Forensic Center have examined,
and the results are in.
Hey, Alan, how are you?
- [Adam] So Alan I sent you this cartridge
in a kind of a bit of a filthy state,
what have you been able to do with it?
- Since it's been cleaned it provides
the extra information and includes
the brand and the caliber.
So the WRA code represents
the Winchester Repeating Arms Company,
and with the caliber the .44 and the WCF
is of course Winchester Center Fire.
- [Mike] The headstamp markings,
the condition of the cartridge
and the depth at which it was found
all place it at the time of the shootings.
- Could that have come from Doyle's Webley?
- No.
- [Adam] Oh.
- No, Webley revolver fires a shorter cartridge.
- [Adam] - Yep.
- [Alan] and the Colt fires the longer .44 Winchester
Center Fire cartridge.
- [Adam] Oh, well that's pretty clear.
So this is from the Webley .442.
- [Alan] It is.
- [Adam] and this the type of cartridge that we've got here.
- [Alan] It is, yes.
- [Adam] Well there's no way it's gonna fit.
- [Mike] So if this cartridge was involved in the murders,
it could only have come from a Kenniff gun.
- So we know they had Winchester repeating rifles,
would it have fitted into their rifle?
- It would.
- [Adam] So we always knew that the Kenniffs
had Colt revolvers but we didn't know what type, did we?
- No, the .44 or the .45, we weren't sure.
- And we kind of assumed because they're the most
famous that it was a Colt .45,
(gun firing)
but they also made the Colt .44,
would that cartridge have fitted into the Colt .44,
the revolver?
- It does yes.
- Well that makes more sense doesn't it?
- Well yeah. - They'd only have to
carry one type of ammunition 'cause it would fit
both the guns the Kenniffs had.
(gun firing)
- So what you guys are saying,
this could be one of the cartridges
that may have killed Constable Doyle
or Albert Dahlke,
fired by one of the Kenniffs.
It's laid there for 115 years.
- [Adam] In the middle of nowhere in a paddock,
and we've found it--
- [Mike] Unbelievable.
Just fantastic.
- See this is brilliant,
this is what I love about archeology,
there's this find that's no bigger
than the end of your finger
that we've found in the middle of nowhere
and yet it provides a direct link to this terrible event
which results in the death of these two guys
including a police officer in the line of duty.
- This is unbelievable, this is an amazing find,
just incredible.
Gives me goosebumps.
I had no doubt that one of my bush ranging ancestors
fired the fatal shots that killed Doyle and Dahlke.
But which one of my relatives?
And I really want to know if the right man was hanged.
(inspiring music)
The trial of my great-uncles, Patrick and Jimmy Kenniff,
was a Queensland sensation.
Arguments raged right up until the last minute
of the six day trial,
and opinions were and still are today
just as divided as to their guilt.
- This copy here of The Truth from November 9th 1902
is the only pictorial record we've got
of the whole trial,
and it's an absolute corker.
You've got images of all the main characters
in the theatrical drama.
You've got the Kenniff boys looking very criminalized
with their swarthy unshaved faces.
It's all here, you've got Sam Johnson,
Tom Kenniff, and Old Man Kenniff as well.
And it really makes it clear in the newspapers
that there are lots of people gathering around,
waiting outside the court to find out what happened.
There were public protests, there were mass petitions,
there were all sorts of events.
And whether it was due to this public pressure or not,
Jimmy Kenniff's death sentence was commuted
to life imprisonment.
However the appeals made on Patrick's behalf all failed.
(rope snapping)
(ominous music)
- When I first started this journey
there were two major questions I wanted to try and answer.
Did my great-uncles murder a policeman
and a station manager,
and did Paddy deserve to hang?
Well now, it's time to ask the "Lawless" team
for some answers.
So what have you got for me?
Well, I think with a crime like this
you've gotta look at three things,
you've gotta look at the means,
the motive and the opportunity.
So for means, what about the weapons?
- Well yeah the evidence on the ground
does seem to match the story
because we found a cartridge that's identical
to the weapons that we know the Kenniffs had.
- A Winchester .44.
- That's right.
- And there was certainly motive,
and there was certainly no love lost between the police
because they'd actually knocked down the Kenniff house
and built a police station on top of it.
- And they had the opportunity,
so we know that the Kenniff brothers must have been there
because Doyle and Dahlke run them down,
and they had Jimmy under arrest.
(menacing music)
- [Mike] We know when Sam Johnson went to get
the handcuffs he heard gun shots,
but he didn't see anything.
So we'll never know who actually fired the fatal shots
that killed Doyle and Dahlke.
It could have been Patrick,
it could have been Jimmy,
or as Indigenous elder Bill Lawton said,
it could have been their younger brother Tom Kenniff,
with Old Man Kenniff as the puppet master
pulling the strings.
- Well we know Sam escaped,
he probably high-tailed it as soon as he heard
the first shots fired.
- And we also know that the Kenniffs probably burned
the bodies whole and then for some reason
stuffed them into saddle bags for the police
to find them later on.
- And look just on that note, let's not forget that both
these men who were killed
were both law-abiding decent citizens.
And one of the Kenniffs, one of my relatives,
killed them.
I've always wondered if Paddy was the one who really did it,
my family for 80 years have always believed
that he didn't do it.
He went to the gallows saying he didn't do it,
but he would, wouldn't he?
- Did Paddy deserve to hang?
I mean his conviction was based on the testimony
of Sam Johnson and that just today
wouldn't hold up in court.
- Not at all?
- No, no it wouldn't.
- And that was definitely the popular
perception at the time.
People had a very strong sense that the trial
had been unjust,
so you know, it is so very interesting
that that strong public feeling against this execution,
ultimately within a couple of decades,
Queensland becomes the first territory
in the whole of the British world
to abolish the death sentence.
This is a powerful statement for a society
that was known as a wild frontier society,
it becomes in many ways the most civil
of civil societies just from this moment.
And your ancestor played a role in that.
- What a legacy.
After learning everything I have,
I've come back to Brisbane
to make a couple of important stops.
The first, is to the descendants of Constable George Doyle.
We will never know who really fired the shots.
From my point of view, I think that Paddy Kenniff
probably didn't do it,
and probably Paddy went to the gallows an innocent man.
So, that's what I've come to tell you.
- I'm not really 100% surprised,
because of what dad used to say,
that it was rumored that the father was involved in it,
but there was no proof of it.
- No proof.
And look on behalf of my wayward family
can I say to the decent and thoroughly
law-abiding Doyle family,
I'm very very sorry.
(melancholy music)
Although it's been over 115 years since the murders,
it's only two generations since my grandfather
changed his name from Kenniff to Munro.
But it's no longer a shameful secret,
in fact, it's something well worth sharing
with my son and grandson.
This is the grave site of Patrick Kenniff,
and it's in an area in South Brisbane cemetery
in this corner here called the Devil's Plot.
And that's because there are over 20 men and women
buried in this small corner here
all of whom were executed.
But for some unexplained reason the only marked grave
is that of Patrick Kenniff.
Some think it might be because the authorities
always knew that he was innocent.
Kenniff was never their correct name,
it was always 'Ken-eef'
when they arrived from Tipperary in the 1860s.
But of course with their Irish accent
the police when they were charging them,
'Ken-eef' in the Irish twang became Kenniff,
and became Kenniff for generations after that.
But once I found out about the Kenniff folklore
in their history,
- Can you see the butterfly?
Oh look at the ant!
- My wife Lea and I decided to name our son Sean,
Sean Kenniff Munro,
who then in turn when he grew up decided with his wife
to name their son Freddie Kenniff Munro.
- Look dad!
- What is it?
- I guess it's our family's way of confronting
all those years of shame and name changes
by facing it and being able to move on.
(haunting music)
♪ You say I am a murderer ♪
♪ Yet kill me in my sleep ♪
♪ Hide behind a 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 ♪