Melbourne Murders: How a crazed inventor escaped the hangman’s noose
When Antonio Soro was sentenced to death for murdering a Melbourne schoolteacher in 1914, a strange twist of fate changed the course of justice.
Victoria
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Antonio Soro was sentenced to death for the murder of Melbourne schoolteacher Patricia Bickett in 1914.
He would later have his death sentence commuted to life in prison, be released to fight for Italy in WW1, and then sneak back into Australia as a free man.
The following story is so unusual that it reads like the narrative of an experimental art film.
Antonio Soro was born in Sardinia in 1884. He had a short career in the Italian Navy as a submariner before immigrating to Australia with his mother in 1908.
They settled with his sister who ran a greengrocer’s in Ballarat.
Soro obtained employment at the greengrocer’s and in his spare time he began working on an
invention. Soon he was proclaiming that he’d invented a contraption which would change the world.
It was a perpetual motion machine capable of harnessing energy from the air. He explained that once the machine was started with air pressure from a bicycle pump it continued to run indefinitely under self-propulsion. The energy created could be transformed into electricity and used for all kinds of applications. It could power whole towns. He even proposed that the machine be attached to Victoria’s trains, enabling them to travel without fuel and with increased speed and power.
Witnesses claimed to have seen the device in action and investors contributed funds to take out patents in fourteen countries.
There was a groundswell of excitement about the invention and it received wide attention in the press. A public demonstration of the machine was organised and dignitaries from around Victoria agreed to attend.
On the day of the big launch Soro was nowhere to be found. His clothing was discovered next to Lake Wendouree and he was feared drowned. He showed up later in Western Australia where he claimed that he’d arrived unintentionally as a result of attaching his machine to a Frenchman’s aeroplane in Ballarat. The power of his invention had caused them to fly further than expected and they had ended up over the Indian Ocean. The plane was ditched in the sea during bad weather and Soro had swum several miles to shore at Fremantle. He had no idea what had become of the French airman. It was decided that Soro was of unsound mind and he was committed to an asylum.
Friends and relatives travelled to Western Australia from Ballarat and secured his release. Back in Ballarat he befriended the Bickett family. The Bicketts were all accomplished musicians, and Soro, being handy with the violin and possessing a lovely tenor voice, was a welcome addition to their household’s musical evenings.
The Bicketts moved to Melbourne in 1913 and Soro followed shortly after. They allowed him free board and treated him as one of the family. One of the daughters, Patricia, had just begun a career as a schoolteacher. She was 22 and had been happily engaged to a young man named John Graham for three years.
Graham had been working away but arrived back in town in September 1914. It was then that Soro’s creepy infatuation with Patricia became apparent. He accosted Graham in front of the family and accused him of offending Patricia. The alarm bells rang for Mrs Bickett and she told Soro he had to move out. He begged to stay but to no avail.
A week and a half later Soro bought a revolver and intercepted Patricia in Royal Park on her way home from work. He shot her twice in the head, once in the abdomen, and then shot himself, the bullet passing through his cheek.
Having only one bullet left, he raised the gun to his head again and pulled the trigger, but it misfired. He then realised that he was being observed by an approaching man and fled the scene.
He was chased by various members of the public, including a boy on a horse, but managed to
escape. He was arrested by police two days later, hiding aboard a ship which was anchored in the Yarra.
Soro admitted killing Patricia but claimed it had been a suicide pact. He said she’d given him the money to buy the gun because her mother wouldn’t allow them to be together.
The jury did not fall for the story, though. They also discounted the theory of temporary insanity. He had purchased the gun in advance, which demonstrated that the murder was premeditated.
He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged.
A petition to have his life spared was successful, largely on account of his time in the asylum in Western Australia. The death sentence was downgraded to life imprisonment with a stipulation that he never be released.
WWI began shortly after his incarceration and in 1918 the Italian Consulate requested that Soro be released into their custody so they could send him to fight at the front.
The Victorian government handed him over, presumably on the assumption that he would either die at the front or stay in Italy.
But he didn’t die at the front and he didn’t stay in Italy.
He survived the war, obtained a passport, and crept back into Australia in 1921. His presence was not discovered by authorities until the story was broken on New Year’s Eve 1927 by a Sydney newspaper.
The federal government went into panic mode. After a desperate investigation, the claims were proven to be true. To make things worse there was nothing that could be done to get rid of him. Soro had been officially released from his sentence, which meant they couldn’t force him to go back to prison. He hadn’t been officially deported so they couldn’t make him leave the country.
Soro lived out his life working as an electrical fitter. He never married or had children. There were no more tales of strange inventions. He passed away in Sydney in 1960, aged 76.
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