John Trevor Kelly, 24, was the last man hanged in NSW in 1939
John Kelly was sent to the gallows in 1939 for murder, a decision his father labelled as “class justice”, claiming his son would have lived if the murder victim wasn’t from a prominent family.
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He walked up to the gallows with a firm step and appeared calm.
He didn’t have any final words.
And outside Long Bay Gaol, only a small group lingered to hear the news of John Trevor Kelly’s execution.
It was August 24, 1939, and by 8am, the quiet 24-year-old became the last man hanged in NSW.
The path that led to this moment began six months previously with the chilling axe murder of Marjorie Constance “Connie” Sommerlad, the daughter of a prominent family in the northeastern NSW town of Tenterfield.
About 1am on the morning of Saturday, February 4, Kelly caught a taxi to Hillcrest farm near Tenterfield, where he had been working.
Two versions of events were given by Kelly after he was arrested about what happened that day.
The first is that when he arrived at the homestead, Connie’s brother and the owner of the farm, Eric Sommerlad, gave him his notice and told him he could not be depended on to carry out his work due to the fact he drank too much.
Kelly claimed he lost control and went outside to get an axe and attacked Eric in his bed on the veranda and when the commotion woke Eric’s sister, Connie, she came running and Kelly hit her with the axe too.
But a second statement he made was likely closer to the truth.
He said that on arriving at the homestead, he went to Connie’s bedroom to give her some headache powders she had asked him to get for her in town and they chatted while he sat on the edge of her bed.
“A desire for her took possession of me, but on making the suggestion to Miss Sommerlad, she opposed it, at the same time singing out for her brother, Eric,” the statement read. “Realising what he might do or say, I struck her on the face with my closed hand.”
He went on to explain that as she followed him out into the dining room, he hit her again, rushed outside to get an axe and hit her in the head with it.
Fearing Eric would find the murder scene, he went to the makeshift bedroom on the veranda where he slept and struck him with the axe too.
When the Sommerlad’s sister Dulcie returned from a trip to nearby Glen Innes later that morning, she found her sister dead in a pool of blood in the dining room and her brother clinging to life in his bed.
Eric Sommerlad would go on to make a full recovery and give evidence at the subsequent trial, but had no memory of the night after he went to bed.
Despite his admission to police, Kelly’s defence counsel, Mr McMinn, claimed Kelly was insane at the time of the attacks and advised his client to plead not guilty.
But crown prosecutor, Mr Clancy, brought in witnesses to show Kelly appeared normal after the attack and even stole two pounds from Connie’s bedroom drawer, a cheque book, hat and an engagement ring.
Witnesses also testified he had passed several bad cheques drawn on the Sommerlad account on his way to Brisbane after the attack and had posed as a young man en route to Toowoomba to propose to his girlfriend with the stolen ring.
It took the jury assembled at the Armidale court just three hours to declare Kelly guilty of murder and a date was set for his execution.
His father, Michael Kelly, called the verdict “class justice” claiming: “There have been crimes just as brutal as my boy’s but the men who were found guilty of them are still alive,” he told a newspaper.
“It is only because the murdered woman was the niece of a prominent man that my son is going to the gallows.”
A reprieve was not granted and Kelly was hanged on August 24, 1939.
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A LIFE OF CRIME
John Trevor Kelly had quite a rap sheet at the time he murdered Marjorie “Connie” Sommerlad in February 1939.
Kelly was born on May 18, 1914, in Tenterfield and by his 24th birthday had been arrested several times for offences like driving without a licence, stealing, “assuming the designation of a police constable” and six times for “false pretences” which basically means attempting to defraud another person.
But just before he was hired by Eric Sommerlad in the summer of 1937, Kelly had been released from jail for the more serious charge of abducting another person.
LONG BAY PRISON
It had the honour of being the only facility in Australia with separate prisons for men and women when it was built in the early 20th Century at Malabar.
The women’s reformatory, with its Federation Gothic entrance, was completed in 1909 and the male penitentiary in 1914.
When the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre opened as part of the Silverwater Correctional Complex in 1997, only short-sentence prisoners remained at Long Bay.
Some of their most famous inmates include underworld bosses Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, bank robber and escape artist Darcy Dugan, notorious criminal Neddy Smith and disgraced cop Roger Rogerson.
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