Gatton Man (1994) is an Australian murder mystery: a true one and the longest murder investigation in the country’s history. My interest in the book came about because I lived in Gatton, rural Queensland, about 100 kilometres west of Brisbane, in 1996-1997. Three Murphy children are murdered on December 26, 1898, in a paddock, two kilometres from Gatton – lying bashed beside their dead horse. They had taken the buggy and horse to go to a dance, but the two sisters, Ellen (18) and Norah (27), were found dead with their brother Michael (29). But more than a murder mystery, it is the exploration of the nature of a murderer.
The author
did not know his father was a wanted man. All he knew were of the thrashings
and beatings he and his siblings received and that “we knew of a terrible force
within him.” The murder occurred before the author’s birth, but he is intrigued
by it, close to his farming property. He recounts his childhood, raised by his
father W.J. Lilley (Bill). It is a rough and rugged country that breeds tough
and hardy men.
Tracing the
historical murder investigation through original police transcripts, post
mortem notes, literature, the 1899 Royal Commission, and his own personal interviews,
Lilley takes the reader back to where it began, 96 years before the book was
written. He includes original transcripts with the “ancient idiosyncrasies in
spelling too.” Here the reader is informed of the position of the bodies, the
state of their clothing, the bullet wounds that killed Michael and the horse,
the “forcible sexeral connection” that had taken place on Nora and Ellen before
their bashings with a rock, the tracks of the horse and buggy, and the
information of witnesses. Sub-Inspector of Police found “an ineffective and
extraordinarily superficial post mortem of the bodies had been made which
afforded no information of any value.” Thereby the local police tried to unravel
the mystery which had few clues “and in which no active or intelligent
assistance from the residents was or ever has been forthcoming.” Nevertheless
Richard Burgess was arrested, known to police as a “bush vagabond,” but was not
charged. Other men were questioned, including the itinerant Thomas Day.
When the
author was reading “The Gatton Mystery” by James and Desmond Gibney (1977) “everything
began to fall into place … I tell you my hair just about stood on end as event
after event revealed Him [his father] … the man who at times tried to be
pleasant … with the deadly sting in the tail for the achievement of the
ultimate motive.” But the authors were describing Thomas Day. Were W.J. Lilley
and Day the same man? The author thinks so: “the surname Day was used by my
father three decades later in Australia.” For all of his life, Merv Lilley
questioned the likelihood that his father, who died in 1952, was the vicious
Gatton murderer.
It remains a
mystery to this day.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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