Subscribe

Subscribe to Ye Olde Crime on iHeartRadio – https://ihr.fm/3kor88W
Subscribe on Stitcher – https://bit.ly/2RtnNgg
Subscribe everywhere else – https://bit.ly/2QjeVZP

Show Sponsor: Phocus – Sparkling water with a spark! https://www.drinkphocus.com/collections/flavors?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=True%20Crime

**Try listening on the GoodPods app – https://goodpods.app.link/VLnHGdCx0hb **

Lindsay and Madison discuss the infamous Gatton Murders, as well as why you should never go to a dance at night, that there are things BESIDES animals that can kill you in Australia, and how important proper police procedures are when trying to, you know, solve a crime. Hear more historical true crime stories at https://linktr.ee/yeoldecrime

Follow on Social Media
https://www.twitter.com/yeoldecrimepod
https://www.instagram.com/yeoldecrimepodcast
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDBay4jJ4AR9f48ZwuU2r2w

Transcript

(0s):
Welcome to true crime by Indy drop-in each week we feature an episode from the best independent creators hit subscribe for more great, true crime content. If you would like to help indie drop-in support indie creators, you can buy us a coffee. Just go to buy me a coffee.com forward slash indie drop-in or click the link in the show notes below today’s episode is from ye old crime. Don’t forget to check out the show notes for links to subscribe and follow us on social media. Enjoy the show. It depends. I mean, it has had a tremendous impact on sleep insomnia and anxiety. If you are suffering from sleep issues like half the world is our sponsor.

(42s):
Real sleep has developed the world’s first personalized sleep solution, customized to you. Unlike prescription over the counter sleep aids, their plant-based formula works with your body to get you to sleep faster, help you sleep deeper and cut down on sleep disturbances. I know I’m probably not alone in this. My sleep definitely has changed with working from home. I tried several things, melatonin, gummies, which gives me weird nightmares, Benadryl, which doesn’t last very long. And I’m up in like two hours, or I have noticed this YouTube. The thing really seems to be consistent enough While sleep is solitary. You are not alone and real sleep is here to help.

(1m 24s):
That’s why we’re teaming up with real sleep to give you 20% off your next purchase. Go to the link on our show notes and use the code P O D D Y. Real sleep is the last sleep product you’ll ever need. Hello and welcome to yield crime where we discuss the funny, strange and obscure crimes of yesteryear.

(2m 8s):
I’m your host Lindsay Valenti. And with me is my sister and cohost Natty. Stangle. Hello, how are you? I am hot and tired. Now you went for a long walk, right? I did go for a long walk. How many miles today? I walked two and a half miles. Nice. Are you going to do another walk later? It’s supposed to rain it rain. Yeah, so probably not, but that’s not too bad. I’m already pretty close to my step goal for the day. So, all right. What do we have today? What’s on the menu today. We are going to be discussing that checks out that’s that’s in our wheelhouse.

(2m 53s):
What kind of murder specifically? The Gatton murders. Have you heard of those before? No. Okay, awesome. So it’s the Gatton murders and this is for Shannon and Christina of the one crime at a time podcast. They requested this after contributing to our equipment fund. So thanks guys. So I was very excited to do this case because I did not know about it. The information was pulled from the following sources, a 2019 unsolved casebook post, the 2017 daily news article by Maura Ballston, the 2017 Huffington post article 2015 daily mail Australia article by Candace Sutton, 2013 Wiki tree article by Paul Middleton, Wikipedia and a wow amazing article.

(3m 43s):
So is this international? It is national and links to all of these articles will be included in the show notes. All right. Let’s travel by boat. Since that was pretty much the primary source of travel before the 19 hundreds. Yes. The town of Gatton in Queensland, Australia is small with around 7,000 residents today and located 60 miles or 97 kilometers west of Brisbane. And located between the cities of Ipswich in the east, in Toowoomba, in the west. I love all of those names. I know, right? Ipswich. Yeah. And during the tail end of the 18 hundreds, it was a popular place to stop for anyone traveling to darling downs, farming region in Southern Queensland via road or rail.

(4m 30s):
Okay. So they had a nice like train station. Yeah. Because like the train was like a newer thing that had been developed during the earlier 18 hundreds. And it was a pretty popular stopping point on the way. Awesome. It also happens to be the location of the most famous unsolved murder in colonial Australian history. So the Murphy family lived on a farm at Blackfellows Creek, which was eight miles or 13 kilometers outside of Gatton. The family consists of Daniel and Mary Murphy and their 10 children. Although not all of their children were still living at home that you eldest boys, Michael and Daniel Jr.

(5m 13s):
We’re currently not living at home. Their eldest son, Michael worked in Westbrook on a government farm, but with travel home on Christmas to spend time with his family and Daniel was a police Constable in Brisbane. When you worked on a government farm, he was only allowed one vacation and that was Christmas. So this particular case takes place around Christmas. So that’s why I noted that he was coming home for Christmas. Okay. So hopefully he had more than just one vacation. I think he had more than one vacation. This was the only day off this entire year that you get. So enjoy it. My son has one only plan. So on the evening of December 26th, 1898, which is boxing day for those familiar with English holiday, three of the Murphy siblings, Ellen, whose real name was Theresa was 18 Nora 27 and Michael 29 took a sulky, which is a lightweight two wheeled horse-drawn vehicle, which is typically only for one person.

(6m 14s):
So kind of like a rickshaw, but horse drawn. So they just wanted to stress out the horses. I get it again. Yep. So they took the silky and left their family’s farm around 8:00 PM to attend a dance at the divisional board hall in gettin. Michael had agreed to accompany his sisters and act as chaperone after taking Ellen to the Mount Sylvia races. And Kathy earlier that day, their mother is quoted as saying that quote, when the girls left each had a laugh on her face. And so they were excited. They were very excited as these dances typically went well into the evening. At first, no one was worried about the fact that they had yet to return, but when 7:30 AM hit and there was still no sign of them, the family began to worry that something had happened.

(6m 59s):
You have to keep in mind, this was a farming family. So they were probably up at like five getting ready to leave when the sun came up. Yeah. To like milk the cows and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah. So Mary sent her son-in-law William McNeill out to find them McNeil who was married to the eldest daughter. Polly began to search on horseback, following the distinctive tracks of the sulky, which had a wobbly wheel. So the tracks would have been very distinctive. In fact, the silky belonged to McNeil. And when he spotted the tracks along tent hill road, about four miles or 6.5 kilometers outside the farm, he discovered that they deviated from the road along a slip rail, a slip rail is a section of fence where the rails can be removed.

(7m 43s):
So you can, can allow vehicles to easy access to paddocks. So it’s kind of like what we would consider like a door for offense nowadays. So you could just remove it. It was like a, like a quote unquote hidden road shortcut looking thing. Yeah. It was basically just like, take some of these out and you can easily go down this trail or drive or whatever, like a dirt road. Yup. Okay. The tracks led him to a neighbor’s wooded pasture and that’s where he found them. No, at first glance he thought they were all sleeping, but as he drew closer on his horse, he was horrified to discover that that was far from the truth. Nora, the elder of the two sisters was found under a tree, laid out on a rug.

(8m 27s):
She had been strangled and her skull had been smashed in, oh God. Okay. The bodies of Ellen and Michael were located a couple of yards away, lying back to back within a few feet of each other. Their skulls had also been smashed in and trigger warning. There will be mentioned those sexual assault in the next minute. So if this is something that will upset you, please skip ahead. Both of the women’s hands had been bound behind their backs with and were found with semen on their legs and clothes and showed obvious signs of rape. One of the weirdest details was that all three of the siblings had their legs carefully placed so that their feet all pointed west.

(9m 11s):
Oh yeah. The perpetrators of the crime had even gone so far as to shoot the horse in the head and its body lay where it fell next to the overturn silky upon further investigation of the bodies. It was discovered that Michael had what appeared to be a bullet wound to the head. But the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, wasn’t able to find the bullet. Michael was also found in possession of his purse, which it was noted that he had it on him when the trio left for the dance inside the 15 shillings or around a hundred pounds a day that he’d had on him were missing. It also looked as though his hands had been tied as well at one point with a nearby breaching strap before being untied, most likely to get access to the perching question, which was found nearby.

(10m 0s):
So it pretty much looks like just a robbery and convenient assault. Yes. William quickly sounded the alarm after riding into town, oddly enough, his first stop wasn’t the police station, but the local Gilbert hotel, which today is known as the Imperial hotel, he notified the 40 some horrified guests of the grizzly scene. He’d just left before proceeding onto the police station around 9:15 AM William informed acting Sergeant William Errol of the murders. And the two made their way back to the crime scene, which was one and a half miles or 2.4 kilometers outside Gatton in an area known as Morin’s paddock at this time in history, Gatton only had a population of around 450.

(10m 43s):
So the local police felt it would be an open and shut case to find the killer or killers. In fact, the lay magistrate, which at this time would have been considered like the lead investigator. Sure. Their mother, Mary, that the identity of her children’s killer slash killers would be solved by nightfall. And as you can imagine, this just wasn’t the case. No. Did he forget that? He said transit stuff. Yeah. It turned out that the Murphy siblings never did dance that night. After arriving at the dance hall at nine, 10:00 PM, they found that the lights were off and the man who had coordinated the party was in the process of closing the doors with no party to attend and no further reason to stay.

(11m 29s):
Michael simply turned the car around and began to head back home. And as we know, they never made it. The investigation was a disaster from the very beginning after Sergeant Errol and William spent 30 minutes examining the scene of the crime Errol returned to get into, to send a telegram to Brisbane. It took two days for that telegram to reach the police department in Brisbane, which left the first few vital days of detective work to local police who had never handled a crime like this before. Hmm. This is such a common thing with a lot of like, even today, like smaller towns, just gumming up and messing up investigations because they’ve had traffic stops and drunks not murder.

(12m 11s):
Yeah. Even though the crime scene was immediately closed off people in town, flocked to the area to do what board people do best stand around and GOC, they destroyed vital evidence, such as any distinguishable footprints around the bodies that could have led to the murderer, the scent so badly that dogs couldn’t be used for any sort of tracking efforts. Awesome. Did they take things? It didn’t snap. It took anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I keep remembering that like cake from that one crazy reasons that people kept taking, which is fucking gross. It’s chorus. Like not to mention the autopsies themselves, which were performed by Dr.

(12m 54s):
Vaughn, Los Bert, who was the government medical officer at Ipswich. And he was, he performed the autopsies under the supervision of Sergeant Errol. The bodies had been moved to the hotel around 4:00 PM on December 27th. So that was the day they were discovered. And he quickly began his examination. Dr. Los Berg believed that the murders took place sometime between 10:00 PM on December 26th and 4:00 AM on the morning of the 27th, based on the impact Dr. Los Berg believed that Michael had been struck on the right side of the head after being shot while Ellen skull had been fractured after being struck twice on the left side of the head, based on how they were found, he theorized that they’d been sitting upright and back to back at the time they were attacked.

(13m 40s):
Okay. So it might’ve been one, one big hit, and then they hit her a second time or two people it’s same. Yeah. Trigger warning. The extent of the damage done to the victims is going to be discussed and the sexual nature of the crime may be triggering. Please skip ahead. If you need to, I can’t skip ahead. Can I, Los Berg found that Nora had been beaten so hard on the left side of her head, that her brain was actually hanging out of her skull. God. Okay. Not to mention. She’d had a harness strap around her neck that indicated she’d been strangled to death.

(14m 22s):
As I mentioned before, Nora and additionally Ellen had been raped and based on the damage he believed the act had been done with the brass handle of a writing with Ellen had also been bludgeoned in a similar way to her sister, but not to the extent that Nora had. So Nora had the two, she had the more severe bludgeoning and Ellen only had been hit twice, but not to the extent that it’s coming out. I wonder if she died faster, Eva, the reports were so inconsistent that all three victims had to be exude to conduct a second autopsy. It was during the second autopsy, which was ordered by chief inspector Stewart, that the missing bullet, which was the ultimate cause of his death was finally found in Michael’s head.

(15m 10s):
They missed that. Yup. Awesome. It was determined that the bludgeoning he received had been in an attempt to hide it. Okay. So they smashed it in, yeah. Due to the state of decomposition at the time of the second autopsy, it was hard to say if the girl’s sexual attack had been conducted in the manner that Dr. Los Berg theorized. So it’s hard to know if it was truly as severe as you thought it was. I mean, it’s severe anyway. Yeah. I’m not discounting what happened to that. It’s all bad, but it was hard to know the severity of it. Yeah. I kind of really, really hope that they were already dead scene.

(15m 52s):
I really do the head of the criminal investigative bureau of Brisbane inspector Frederick required, traveled personally to get, and to lead the investigation and find the Murphy’s killer slash killers upon arriving at Gatton, a telegram to his superiors back in Brisbane, read as follows quote, circumstances, point to premeditation details. Most atrocious there is so far nothing to lay hold of. And a few days after the grisly discovery, the local Toowoomba Chronicle reported that the people of Gatton has started referring to the case as the Gatton mystery, alluding to the fact that everyone had already given up any hope that it would be solved and justice would be served by braking.

(16m 34s):
As it usually does. Suspicion immediately turned towards the Murphy family itself, including the son-in-law who had discovered the bodies, William McNeill. It was reported that he had a tricky relationship with his in-laws, but he had a solid alibi during the time the murders took place and was soon ruled out as a suspect, a woman from a nearby farm reported hearing gunshots and screams of father around the time the murders were believed to have taken place, which rumors that there may have been an incestuous relationship between the father and his two daughters, and that he’d killed them to cover it up. Other rumors circulated around the town priest while another cast suspicion on the remaining seven Murphy children.

(17m 14s):
One rumor even went so far as to suggest that it was revenge against Polly William McNeil’s wife by a jilted, former suitor, still others believe that had something to do with corruption in the police force. No never has been before. And it doesn’t happen today. Nope. Okay. Other rumors about towns circulated about Michael, the lone male victim of the slangs. There was talk that he’d gotten around according to an article written by Paul Michael Murphy was known as a womanizer and a predator of very young women and fathered at least one child out of wedlock, but it was rumored.

(17m 60s):
There were more one woman he’d reportedly gotten pregnant, died during childbirth, which would certainly have been the motive to see him killed by her angry family. Nora, the Elvis of the slain sisters was also the target of some revenge. Apparently she was fairly cruel to a local school teacher, even going so far as to harass her at her home and send damning letters about her to a Queensland newspaper host, the teacher went mad and her sister vowed to get back at Nora for what she’d done to her family is not great. No, all them deserve to die that way. Yeah. Like no.

(18m 40s):
Great. Yeah. It wasn’t wasn’t Nora. The one that was more severely beaten. Yeah. It was the older of the two. The investigators themselves believed it was a crime of opportunity committed by some transients as they move through town, they focus their efforts on a couple of men with pretty long rap sheets that had arrived in Gatton shortly before the murders took place. One of the men man named Richard Burgess 39 had been released from prison a few weeks prior to arriving in Gatton on December 10th. After spending time in and out of jail as a career criminal, what’s your career, I’m a criminal. Here’s my business card.

(19m 21s):
Mature prior to his release, he’d been incarcerated for assaulting a woman in 1897. He happened to be charged for saddle theft shortly after the Murphy murders. In his own words, Burgess claimed quote. I was born to be hanged and quote. And several witnesses claimed that he was the killer. A local farmer claimed that Burgess told him that Michael had been shot before it had been reported by the news. While another told police that Burgess had told him about three dead bodies in Gatton before news, if the crime had even reached where he lived. Very interesting, unfortunately for police, he had a solid alibi during the night of the murder as he was over 20 miles or 32 kilometers away at the time.

(20m 4s):
Of course he was another suspect who many to this day believe is most likely. The culprit was a 20 year old man named Thomas Day, who also went by the alias of Thomas Furner or Theo farmer for recently getting hired by a local butcher shop run by AIG Clark. He had taken up residence at a shack, not far from the crime scene. The police never had enough evidence to nail him as a suspect. Dale is also believed to be responsible for the murder of 15 year old Alfred Steven Hill, who was killed in Oxley a few weeks before the Murphy murders, the boys horse had also been shot in the head, which was eerily similar to what happened to Murphy’s horse. Yeah, that is quite the cooling Keating.

(20m 46s):
So five and 3000 interviews later, no charges were ever filed and the case continued to remain unsolved. Awesome. Great. In 1899, the Royal commission conducted an investigation regarding the handling of the case during their review of the standards of policing inspector Urquhart was quoted during an inquiry regarding the case as saying, quote, we have failed because from the very outset, we had no chance of success. And quote honest, during the inquest Dr. Los Berg refused to admit to any negligence on his part. Oh, sure, sure.

(21m 27s):
Not him though. That’s fine. Yeah. Even though there was evidence proving, otherwise he denied that. He told anyone that he’d completed the autopsy. He explained that he had merely given them a quick examination due to the fact that he’d been suffering from blood poisoning at the time. No blood poisoning, very common. Mr. Williams, JP, which stands for justice of the peace testified that he’d placed the order for burial. After believing Dr. Los Burke had finished his postmortems, even though he hadn’t given him any orders for burial at the time, believing that final orders would be arriving from Ipswich. So he assumed they were done. So he’s like, let’s just wrap this up.

(22m 8s):
Yep. Barium. Awesome. Southern spectrum Galbraith testified that he was told by Dr. Loessberg that he’d completed the autopsies and was unable to find the bullet. So it was just a bunch of people not wanting to do the paperwork, get, get it done. Like, oh yeah. He told me about the, yeah. He said he was done. Yeah, no. They said they were down with the body. So I’ll checks out a clerk named George Bains testified that he had been present during the conversation between Dr. Los Berg and Galbraith. And that the doctor had not mentioned completing the autopsies is supposedly blood poisoning or any request to not bury the bodies in response. Dr. Loessberg stated that he never seen lurk Bains in his life.

(22m 51s):
Fun. These people are fun. Yeah. I’ve never seen that man before my life. Yeah. I heard him. I heard him and he said he didn’t say anything. Backing him up. I’ve never seen you. That’s my purse. I don’t know you pretty much. Hello. True crime fans. Do you need a little energy? So you can binge more of your favorite podcasts, but you don’t want to load up on a bunch of calories, sugar and sweeteners. Well, you need some focus spelled P H O C U S. Focus is a sparkling water with a spark focus is a delicious health-conscious sparkling water infused with a boost of natural tea caffeine. There are tons of great flavors, including blood orange, mixed Berry, cherry Cola, crisp apple root beer, grapefruit yuzu in lime and cucumber impeach.

(23m 41s):
I know one of these flavors is going to be your next favorite. Sparkling. Your body needs water and you need focus. You can buy it at drink. focus.com. Remember that spelled P H O C U S and use discount code, true crime at checkout for 20% off. Thank you so much to focus for sponsoring this episode. That’s drink focus.com discount code, true crime for 20% off. I’ll put a really easy link to click down in the show notes below The Royal commission laid into Sergeant Errol at the inquest for his complete ineptitude in handling the murders. Errol took zero notes at the crime scene.

(24m 22s):
Didn’t interview, anyone who was present and didn’t secure the site to prevent looky-loos from destroying any and all evidence Errol had requested to have the telegram to the Brisbane commissioner police marked urgent, but was told that police didn’t have any sort of authority in sending urgent telegrams. Yeah, this was later proved completely false, especially when they also pointed out the fact that instead of returning immediately to the crime scene, he instead waited at the telegram office for a reply because it was a holiday. Even though the telegram arrived at the Brisbane commission at 12:52 PM on December 27th, no one actually opened it until 9:00 AM.

(25m 5s):
The next day on December 28th in regards to Michael’s purse and the mystery surrounding the breaching strap. When Michael’s body had been moved around 1:30 PM, the day of the murder, it’s believed that someone had untied Michael’s hands to gain access to the purse, which later went missing. The behavior of the Murphy family themselves was also suspect during the in-class only the son, Daniel Murphy, who was employed by the Brisbane police department seemed willing to help. However, because he wasn’t living at home during the time of the murders and wasn’t present on boxing day, he was unable to give testimony on behalf of his family.

(25m 47s):
It was only after a threat of a summons that the rest of the Murphy clan, which consisted of the remaining children, John Jeremy, Patrick, William, Holly, and Catherine consented to questioning during the inquest. It was noted that they showed nothing but apathy and gave off the appearance that they’d rather forget about the murders than look further into who had committed them. That’s not a good sign. No. Daniel did provide evidence at the commission. However, he shared how he was informed of the deaths of his siblings. The day they were discovered by a family friend, he immediately applied for a three-day leave of absence to return home, to Gatton, which was granted, but he missed the 1:00 PM train.

(26m 30s):
After returning to the station, he visited the detectives at the criminal investigation branch to request their help. But none of the detectives were interested in taking any sort of action because they believe the murders were a hoax. After this. Daniel was able to catch the 5:00 PM train to get okay. Inspector Erkhart. Meanwhile received Sergeant arrow’s telegram, but decided to take no action after hearing the rumors that it was a hoax. Awesome. So the police just thought it was fake for a long time before they even took it seriously. Yep. Cool. At 4:00 PM, he was informed that the rumors were in fact false, but because the information hadn’t come through official channels, he didn’t make the commissioner aware of the crimes until 9:00 PM on December 28th.

(27m 19s):
So that was the next day the commissioner ordered or required to take two of his detectives immediately to Gatton. And even though they could have taken the midnight train from Brisbane to Gatton, they instead chose to leave at seven 30, the next morning on December 29th, it’s a holiday. Why would they bother in response to this information? The Royal commission stated that the series of events were quote in comprehensible indicated of the existence of a rotten system of policing and a culpable indifference on the part of the inspector to his duty, to the public and quote. And I’m sorry, you would think to at a minimum, they would try a little harder if it was the family of one of their own.

(28m 2s):
Exactly. You know, like that seems weird, especially since the brother took it so seriously and got a leave of absence and tried to get help and left as soon as he could, what would he gain from lying about the fact that three of his siblings had been murdered? Yeah, probably what, what they thought they were like, oh, well he just wants an extended vacation, but still I don’t, I wouldn’t want to be alone. Yeah, sure. No. My siblings were murdered horrifically when Thomas Day was brought before the commission, the now 22 year old had been in possession of a jumper that was covered in blood the day following the murders, he claimed it was animal blood.

(28m 44s):
And his boss had asked him not to wash the jumper just in case he did have something to do with the crime. Thomas ended up washing the jumper anyway, until it was clean. Oh no. He said no, but I just, I really want to make sure it looks nice before the court. This is my good jumper. Yeah. I just really wanted to look nice. So sorry guys only got the one, the hut where Thomas lived was just 300 yards or 900 feet away from the scene of the crime. And locals came forward claiming to have seen him roaming the area where the bodies were found the night before the murders took place. Police hadn’t considered him a solid suspect back in 1898.

(29m 24s):
And just two weeks after the murders had been committed and with no formal investigation into him, Thomas skipped town and never came back records show that he later enlisted in the army in 1898 before deserving in may of 1899. Awesome. So just all around really cool guy. A year later in 1900 Thomas Day, who at this time was going by the moniker of Thomas burner died in Sydney hospital in new south Wales on October 25th after sustaining a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Prior to this, he left behind a note that mentioned him being present at the Gatton murders, which was published in the October 27th, 1900 edition of the Western Australian newspaper quote, just a few words, wishing to inform the police about the Gatton murder, which I suppose our hope will be found out when I am no more.

(30m 16s):
I am going to my long rest, but still before I leave the world, I wish to state what I know for a certain fact and quote, interestingly enough, any names he would have mentioned as to who committed the crime weren’t published, what the letter was finished with the following quote. I know the public may wonder, but I do not wonder as I am quite sure the case was to be kept quiet among the police, which I think is about time. They were shown up. So hoping the Gatton affair will go ahead and quote, he also claimed that he experienced recurring nightmares from witnessing the siblings, heads being bludgeoned. I don’t doubt it. Yeah. He probably experienced like, was there an active war when he enlisted into the military?

(30m 59s):
I don’t think so. If there is, I don’t, I don’t, I didn’t pop in my notes. There was okay. A book published in 2013 by Stephanie Bennett claims that a man named Joe Quinn who also had numerous aliases was the actual killer of the Murphy’s while researching criminals in the Gatton area. At the time of the murders, she came across Quinn who was employed as a Swagman, which is someone who walks from farm to farm, to work as a labor. Okay. So kind of like a conch, an independent contractor. Yep. Apparently he was known as a bit of a habitual criminal and a key member of the 1891 Australian Scherer strike, which was a dispute between union and non-union wool workers.

(31m 42s):
Okay. And he had a bit of a personal vendetta against Michael Murphy. Michael had exposed Quinn as a felon when he happened to find out that he was posing as a barber, as Quinn languished in jail. He swore that he would murder Michael for what he’d done. And according to Bennett, four years later Quinn along with the help of a local gang did just that on fact, one of the men that made up Quinn’s gang was Thomas Day. Oh. And it all becomes clearer now. And 120 years later, the people of Australia are still trying to find answers as to who killed the Murphy children and why I’m really upset that the family didn’t care.

(32m 24s):
I am too. Like that sucks. Like you can be, you can be terrible people in a terrible family, but to not care at all. Yeah. But it makes me think like with their dismissiveness too, like what were they hiding that they didn’t want to be a part of the public shady boots business where they into well, and it’s like, were they aware of what Michael had been doing as far as his pre-marital dalliances with some local ladies? And I did read something that went into more detail about that aspect of the case, because it was a personal retelling and I couldn’t verify the information anywhere else.

(33m 8s):
I did not include that information. Yeah. That would be a tough call. So I didn’t go too deep into it. But apparently at least according to the author of the article that I read, very young girls constituted them being 18. While at the time he was 27. So not super bad, not like he was just a creep. He was just a creep. He wasn’t a child predator. So yeah. But if, if those people had made it seem like if they, if they felt like he was a child predator, that would make up for the violence and if they were after him, the other two girls were just extras.

(33m 50s):
Well gross. Thank you for that. Hey, true crime fans. Have you ever been reading about a case and suddenly find yourself down a wormhole with no way out then the one crime at a time podcast is for you. Sit back, relax, listen and laugh. As we jump in the hole for you to bring you the stories, you only thought you knew join us weekly. As we died in one crime at a time, And this week’s podcast plug is the one crime at a time podcast. And I really enjoy listening to these two ladies talk true crime.

(34m 32s):
They’re really sassy. And they like hold nothing back. So they’re yeah. They’re like two Southern ladies and it’s hilarious. They’re banter and giggles are delightful. And it just feels like you could just like sit down with a cup of coffee and some breakfast treats and just like listen to them and like chat about whatever the cases are they’re talking about. So I encourage you to click the link in our show notes, to listen to Shannon and Christina and hear them dive into the darkness one crime at a time. And this week’s listener question comes from Emily of the pineapple pizza podcast. Hey, money. She wants to know if you could know one truth about existence, the universe, anything, what would you want to know?

(35m 16s):
What is in the ocean? What is in the ocean? What is down there? I need to know. I know that was a quick turnaround. Quick, no time to think about that spend so much time just trying to get into when we haven’t even explored like 10% of the ocean in the earth. And like every time, every time we’re curious, there’s like some prehistoric nightmare. That’s like the first octopus ever. And we’re like, whoa, nevermind.

(35m 56s):
We’re good. We’re going to wait another 15 years until we go back down. But like the Mariana trench, we have like barely dipped our toes in it. I want to know. I want to know really bad about you. Okay. I think the ocean is terrifying. So I’d rather be ignorant. Let’s see. What do I really want to know? Where are the pyramids made by aliens? Hmm. I’m just curious. Yeah, they were perfectly made and I would like to think they weren’t made on the backs of slaves. Like we were told, it’s probably built on the blacks that had the backs of slaves, like we were told, but I would much rather take aliens over that.

(36m 36s):
Cool. So what’s something good. You’d like to share this week to watch your, your kiddos this weekend for the first time in like almost two years. And I don’t normally get the privilege to watch them just because my blood sugars are pretty erratic. Whenever I watched children, like they crashed pretty fast just because I have a harder time paying attention to myself and what my body needs. And it’s harder to kind of step away and need a snack unless they expect to. And so it was nice to be able to watch them comfortably. And we made jewelry boxes out of Flay goes and played ping pong and decorated cookies.

(37m 23s):
And it was super fun and it was kind of my first real taste of normalcy since the pandemic started. And it was visually nice. But yeah, I was super tired afterwards. I was like Coca Coca Cola and they have to immediately after, but yeah, what’s one good thing for you. Along with that, I, Thomas and I were finally able to take a weekend away for the first time in like 18 months to attend one of my friend’s weddings in Wisconsin. And I really enjoyed being able to just relax and be in the moment and not stress about anything and not have to worry about the kids fighting with each other or yelling and or bugging on the dog and all this stuff.

(38m 15s):
So that was really like relaxing. And it was nice to pretend that everything was normal. Again, even though things were normal yet able to feel safer and comfortable in the environment you were in. Yeah. I mean, both Thomas and I, our backs, I mean, we still had our mass with us. The ceremony was outdoors. It wasn’t a huge wedding, I would guess between 75 and a hundred people. I mean, it’s still, it’s still the largest group that I’ve been around since, before the pandemic started. Yeah. So I was a little antsy, but it’s weird. It’s weird.

(38m 55s):
Getting back to that. Yeah, but for the most part, I mean, we were outside for a lot of it when we were inside for the dinner and stuff. Our table was towards the back of the room. So we weren’t super close to a lot of other people if they weren’t surrounded by other people, which made me feel a little bit more comfortable. So that’s awesome. And it was just kinda nice to be able to just relax and drink a little bit and chill out. Let your hair down. Yep. Good weekend. Yeah. Shelly, Michelle, you can find us [email protected]. We’re also on Twitter at yield crime pod and on Instagram at yield crime podcast. We’re also on YouTube. You can find us by either clicking the link in our show notes or by searching for yield crime podcast.

(39m 40s):
You can write to us, we have a PO box, send us whatever that yield prime podcast PO box 3 41, Wyoming, Minnesota, 5 5 0 9 2. You can also email [email protected]. We are running very low on questions. So if you’d like to send us some questions for us to answer, we would love that it can be about whatever you want. Just nothing too crazy personal. I’m not going to give you my social security number, try a great way to support the show if you want it to help us, but can’t necessarily do so.

(40m 20s):
Financially would be to leave a five-star rating and review on either apple pod chaser, or you can do it on pod bean as well. And this is a five-star review. We received from the unpredictably us podcast and they say, these ladies are awesome. I love their vibe and energy. They have together very well-researched and awesome storytelling. I listened to their nursery rhyme to die for episode first and was captivated by the way they told the story. I can’t wait to keep listening. Nice. Thank you. That was the Maryanne cotton episode Wolf. If you would like to support us financially, you can do so and buy me a coffee. You can also join our Patrion for as low as a dollar a month and enjoy early ad-free access to our episodes as well as more bonus content, depending on what tier you join it.

(41m 9s):
We have 1, 5, 10, and $15 tiers. There is also going to be another sale on our T public store. This week you can enjoy 35% off May 27th through the 31st. Nice to go ahead and get your swag on and on that note as always I’m Lindsay and I’m Madison, and we’ll see you next time with another tale as old crime. Thanks again to ye old crime. For the amazing episode, don’t forget to look in the show notes for a link to subscribe directly to yield crime. You can also search ye old crime in any podcast app. Thanks again for listening to true crime by Indy drop-in.

(41m 49s):
If you would like your show featured, reach out to us at Indy drop-in on all social media or go to indie drop-in dot com. See you next time.