New book challenges the legend of Ned Kelly and gives voice to victims of the Kelly Gang
RAISED in the shadow of his great-grandfather’s murder, Leo Kennedy witnessed the deep psychological wounds inflicted on successive generations of the families of the Kelly Gang’s victims, as the Ned Kelly myth grew.
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THE great-grandson of murdered Sergeant Michael Kennedy, author Leo Kennedy’s new book, Black Snake, challenges the legend of Ned Kelly, giving voice to the victims of a merciless gang of outlaws instead of celebrating Kelly as a heroic man of the people.
STEPPING silently among the darkening trees four armed figures moved over the rise and across Germans Creek, to the tall spear grass at the southern edge of the police camp.
They were dressed in their gaudy Greta Mob style and armed: Dan with a common single-barrelled fowling piece and a pistol; Hart with a double-barrelled shotgun; Byrne with a large-bore very old-fashioned weapon and a pistol; and Ned with his worn rifle and a pistol.
They had over twenty-five shots loaded and at the ready before they needed to reload from the supply they brought with them.
Without a sound they crouched hidden in the spear grass, within spitting distance of the two policemen.
NED KELLY NOT A FOLK HERO, A FAILED TERRORIST: DOUG MORRISSEY
KELLY GANG VICTIMS ALL BUT FORGOTTEN AS BUSHRANGER ADORED
NED KELLY MOVIE TO SHED LIGHT ON THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGER
Ned and his accomplices exchanged a glance. Should they wait for the other two troopers, or make their move while they had strength in numbers?
The signal was given. Strike now. The four rose from the spear grass, guns raised. ‘Bail up. Hold up your hands.’
Lonigan, crouched by the fire, looked up. Horrified, he began to run east toward the creek.
As he ran his long coat was in his way as his right hand desperately grabbed at the cap over his revolver, trying to free it.
Ned turned his aim from McIntyre onto Lonigan, his weapon tracing the path of the fleeing officer. He fired.
Lonigan, looking back, took the shot through his right eye. He staggered, then fell heavily.
‘Oh! Christ, I have been shot,’ he cried, as he flailed on the ground, lunging and writhing. He breathed strenuously, then went quiet. Dead. Murdered.
Lonigan died empty-handed, his pistol holstered where he lay. He never stood a chance.
The round that struck him was designed to split apart upon firing. It was a trick Ned used to compensate for his weapon’s deficiencies.
By carving nicks into his bullets in this way, he could improve his chances of a hit fourfold.
Ned would later say he planned to capture and interrogate the two officers.
He would claim he intended merely to embarrass the police by taking their horses and boots, forcing a barefoot retreat to Mansfield.
Reality bore no resemblance to Ned’s claims. In McIntyre’s case, when he heard the command to bail up he thought it was the two Michaels playing a prank.
But when he turned and was confronted by the four startling criminals, he recognised the Kelly brothers.
With Ned’s rifle trained upon him, McIntyre surrendered, his arms flung out horizontal. Only then did Ned’s eyes move off him towards Lonigan.
A start, a stumble, a gunshot. McIntyre turned at the sound to see Lonigan mortally wounded.
The attackers ran forward. ‘He was a plucky fellow,’ Dan said of Lonigan.
‘Did you see how he caught at his revolver?’ With Lonigan lying dead in the grass, McIntyre was on his own.
Despairing, unthinking, McIntyre let his outstretched arms droop a few inches. The outlaws bellowed as one.
‘Keep your hands up!’ ‘Oh, God. My time has come,’ said McIntyre. ‘Do you have any firearms?’ barked Ned. ‘I have not.’ ‘Where is your revolver?’ ‘At the tent,’ said McIntyre.
Dan ran to the tent, yelling, ‘Come out, you bloody bastards.’ McIntyre forlornly told him there was nobody there.
The two men who McIntyre did not recognise coolly held their weapons pointed at him, as did Ned.
Dan Kelly was the extreme opposite — nervously excited, laughing in hysterical bursts.
Rushing about, his strange clothing much too large for him, he looked crazed and grotesque to McIntyre.
‘Where are your mates?’ demanded Ned. ‘They are out,’ McIntyre replied.
McIntyre was ordered to raise his hands above his head while Ned patted him down, even searching the officer’s boots for concealed weapons.
Meanwhile the others dragged Lonigan’s body to the south side of the logs. Berated, threatened and pumped for information for the better part of an hour, McIntyre did his best to stay calm.
All the while, McIntyre was confronted with the sight of his dead, disfigured companion.
‘Lonigan’s body was visible from where I stood,’ he would recall. ‘I tried to keep myself from looking at it, lest it should unnerve me … The pallor of death had spread over his countenance, and the setting sun … had cast the long shadows of the forest over the body.’
The attackers slipped back into the long grass to lie in wait for their next victims. Shortly before 6pm, after a hard day’s ride and a fruitless search, the two Michaels rode slowly into camp from the north, following the miners’ bridle trail.
McIntyre stood up as they neared. His assailants, unseen, took aim.
Approaching his fellow officers, McIntyre raised his arms and said, ‘You had better dismount and surrender for you are surrounded.’
Thinking this a joke, Michael Kennedy laughed and casually rested his right hand on his holster.
‘It is all right. I will,’ he replied. Seeing the Sergeant’s hand by his revolver, Ned fired a shot at him that missed. Michael cried out, ‘Steady, lads. There’s no need for that!’
To no avail. Another shot came at Sergeant Kennedy. Then a volley at Scanlan some yards back.
Caught mid-dismount, Scanlan tried to swing his rifle round his body. His horse startled and tossed-up.
Another hail of bullets headed towards him as he was thrown by his frightened horse. Wounded three times in his right side, Scanlan landed heavily, entangled in his rifle strap. Ned rushed forward and blazed another shot at Scanlan as the dazed and bloodied officer struggled on all fours. A fatal shot struck Scanlan in the chest. He slumped, blood gushing. Dead. Murdered.
From a quiet campsite to a bloody mess, the Stringybark clearing was now ablaze with gunfire — though none of it came from the police, as they had no time to arm themselves.
McIntyre would late recount that Scanlan ‘received a ball [from Ned’s weapon] under the right arm, which I feel assured caused his death … I swear that Scanlan did not fire a shot, and he was incapable afterwards as he fell to his knees’.
Given no chance to help his dying friend, Michael Kennedy could only scramble for cover, dismounting and using his horse for protection. With his Sergeant under heavy fire, McIntyre rushed forward, grabbing at the reins and struggling to calm the panicked beast. Michael grappled with his pistol case and got his revolver out, only to drop it as the horse bucked and shied against him. The horse then bolted towards the creek, with McIntyre clutching the bridle. McIntyre grasped for the saddle and struggled aboard. Head low, McIntyre rode off on the Sergeant’s horse, with bullets whistling around him.
By McIntyre’s account, Ned never guaranteed the other three would spare the lone trooper.
Lonigan and Scanlan were dead and the criminals were all shooting at the Sergeant. McIntyre saw his only chance in the rising doom. He turned the Sergeant’s horse north under a salvo of fire.
He urged the horse on, beyond sight of Sergeant Kennedy and the carnage.
Sergeant Kennedy was now on his own. He ran behind the trees, dodging the attackers’ bullets, trying to follow the path of McIntyre and his horse, with the killers in pursuit.
McIntyre continued north towards the junction of Stringybark and Ryans Creek before heading along Ryans Creek.
Michael broke west earlier, perhaps following the sound of hooves, and hoping to cut the corner to catch up.
The Kelly brothers and co first chose to hunt Sergeant Kennedy, before sending Byrne and Hart on horseback after McIntyre.
With no account from McIntyre of the pursuit of Kennedy, we have only the inconsistent word of Ned: ‘He [Kennedy] got behind another tree and fired at me again. I shot him in the armpit as he was behind the tree.’
Medical evidence would later show that the only way this could have occurred was if Sergeant Kennedy had his arms up straight in an act of surrender.
Sergeant Kennedy covered about 800 yards on foot in an arc, but was only a quarter of a mile northwest as the crow flies from the police camp.
Injured and outnumbered, he was running out of options. According to Ned, Sergeant Kennedy ‘ … dropped his revolver and ran again, and slewed around. I fired with the gun again and shot him through the right chest, as I did not know he had dropped his revolver and was going to surrender.’
Ned would claim elsewhere that he thought Sergeant Kennedy’s hand, he claimed darkened by blood, held a pistol.
But the helpless officer was, in fact, in the act of surrender. According to Ned, the badly wounded Sergeant fell and the pursuers ran to him. They could have let him be or, more mercifully, got him to the nearest house for some hope of medical attention.
They did neither, despite a published claim, attributed to Ned, that Michael Kennedy pleaded for his life: ‘Let me alone to live, if I can, for the sake of my wife and family. You surely have shed blood enough.’
Ned would go on to give many conflicting accounts of what passed between Michael Kennedy and the criminals in the moments or hours that followed.
The newspapers made up others. A number of torn pages missing from his police notebook led some to surmise that Michael Kennedy wrote a note to his wife.
If written, it was never passed on. Sergeant Michael Kennedy was shot through the heart at close range with the Reverend’s gun.
In one of Ned’s various versions, the outlaw claims he ‘shot Kennedy in a fair fight’.
Ned may well have believed his noble claims; many others did not. The Kellys robbed Sergeant Kennedy where he lay, taking what money he had in his pockets.
They also souvenired his notebook, fob watch, chain and ring. Ned later showed off the watch as a macabre trophy.
Night would soon fall over the bloody scene. In time the darkness would spread far beyond. The life of Michael Kennedy was snuffed out, and with it five young children were fatherless.
Lonigan would leave behind four children himself. Both left pregnant widows. In due course the officers’ wives would receive the shattering news, and with it many a gruesome detail, whether real or embellished.
The manhunt for the Kelly brothers, Hart and Byrne would go on, though for Bridget and many others it could no longer bring an end to the terrible troubles wrought by Ned Kelly and his murderous gang.
This is an edited extract from Black Snake: The Real Ned Kelly Story by Leo Kennedy with Mic Looby (Affirm Press), available from Tuesday, October 9.
You can order the book for only $28 here or post a cheque/money order to:
Herald Sun Shop, PO Box 14730, Melbourne VIC 8001
Originally published as New book challenges the legend of Ned Kelly and gives voice to victims of the Kelly Gang
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