Author Barry McArthur on his Pentridge Prison meetings with cop killer William O’Meally

William O’Meally was a killer, repeat escapee and the last man sentenced to be flogged in Victoria — but time in prison made him a “gentle soul”.

William O'Meally was a police killer and repeat prison escapee.

William O’Meally was a convicted police killer, feared standover man, repeat prison escapee, and the last man flogged in Victoria.

Yet to Barry McArthur, who befriended him at Pentridge, he was an “engaging gentle soul” with a kindly face and soft handshake who was happy to answer his question, “Did you do it?”

O’Meally is the subject of a new episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters:

Barry, an author and retired teacher, gained O’Meally’s trust during a teaching placement at Pentridge Prison in 1975.

By 1952, O’Meally, 32, already had 42 convictions, including five for assaulting police.

One night in 1952, Constable George Howell, 21, working at Malvern East Police Station, rode a bike to Caulfield’s Crystal Palace Theatre, where there had been a spate of thefts from cars.

After spotting a man loitering near parked cars, he gave chase, but the offender turned and fatally shot him in the stomach at point-blank range.

The funeral procession of Constable George Howell in 1952.

While O’Meally declared his innocence and claimed he was framed by police, he was sentenced to hang for murder, which was commuted to life in prison.

O’Meally escaped from Pentridge in 1955, and again in 1957. The second time he grabbed his accomplice’s handgun and shot a prison official in the thigh.

With O’Meally already imprisoned for life, the judge imposed an unexpected punishment – 12 strokes of the cat o’ nine tails in one session.

It was the first flogging in 15 years, and O’Meally said it opened his rib cage, and left him with open chest and back wounds.

Barry befriended O’Meally four years before he was released after serving 27 years, making him Victoria’s longest serving prisoner.

William O'Meally, who served 27 years in prison, holding a portrait from the time of his arrest.

O’Meally praying in his prison cell.

O’Meally invited Barry into his cell, and they knelt and prayed together in front of a shrine the police killer had erected to honour the Virgin Mary, with a carved image of her as the centrepiece.

While O’Meally, who died in 1995, proclaimed his innocence to the end, Barry drew his own conclusions after one eerie exchange.

“I said to him one day, ‘Bill, in 1952, did you really shoot that policeman, George Howell?’” Barry recalls.

“He shook his head and he said, ‘No, Barry, it was not me, it was another man, I never shot that constable.’

“Whether I’m right or wrong, whether I imagined it, I just thought he was telling me it was actually not him as he is now, he’s a different man, he’s reformed, he’s found God, and he’s a different person than what he was back in 1952.”

Listen to the interview about William O’Meally with Barry McArthur in the In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.