The eerie tale of the Murray River sniper

Quiet and a bit slow, Claude Batson seemed a harmless eccentric, but when the skilled marksman went out for “a bit of bushranging”, chaos ensued.

Claude Batson was the best marksman for miles.

He was well known around the border town of Jingellic on the upper Murray for his uncanny accuracy with a rifle or pistol, no matter the conditions.

But Batson wasn’t exactly popular. The 23-year-old farmhand was quiet, and lived inside his own head.

Despite a reputation as being a bit slow, he was a keen reader of fiction and filled his imagination with tales of bandits and shootouts.

When he wasn’t working, he wandered into the scrub and honed his skill with a .303 rifle.

It was a warm morning in February 1924 when things went bad.

Another Jingellic resident passed Batson on the bridge over the Murray and stopped to chat.

Batson was loaded up as if he was heading out on a week-long hunting trip.

Countless rounds of ammunition were tucked all over his clothing, he carried a bag of food and more ammunition, and, of course, he carried the rifle.

The marksman offered little explanation about what he was doing.

Perhaps in his own mind, Batson was going hunting.

The Murray River at Jingellic, close to the site of the ill-fated picnic. Picture: Trove

THE PICNIC

On that same sunny morning, a group of locals gathered for a picnic at Jingellic creek, near where it flowed into the Murray.

The party was made up of dairy farmer Charles Barber, war veteran Major William McGrath and his wife, who lived a short distance away from the creek, a farmer Charles Grainor and his wife, butter factory owner David Sheppard, and an older man named Richard King who grew tobacco.

They enjoyed a feast on the grass and were finishing up when the shooting started.

At first they thought it was a rabbit hunter.

Then Charles Grainor fell to the ground.

More bullets whistled around the paddock and soon Sheppard was down, too.

Barber caught a glimpse of the shooter, a man in a black hat across the creek.

It was unmistakably Claude Batson, the young man he employed as a farmhand.

The men called to the women, who had been washing dishes in the creek when the shooting started, to flee into the water.

Then Major William McGrath, a young veteran of the Great War, showed the courage that had seen him twice cited in conflict.

He made a break for his farmhouse some 150m away and, despite being shot multiple times in the back, fetched his own rifle which, when aimed at Batson, caused the murderous sniper to flee into the bush.

When the scene of desperate carnage was relayed to police, the wounded were taken to Albury Hospital and a swarm of residents from both sides of the border joined authorities in the hunt for Batson.

A local boy, who had seen the fugitive two hours before the picnic shooting, came forward. He thought Batson was joking when he said, armed with his .303, “I think I’ll do a bit of bushranging.”

There was every chance Batson would strike again.

Claude Batson after his capture, and a 1924 newspaper article about the picnic shooting. Pictures: Trove

GONE TO THE HILLS

While the picnickers were in a critical condition in hospital, word spread quickly about the fugitive Batson.

Police were soon roaming the region on horses, bicycles and by foot, joined by a small army of rifle-toting locals keen to capture the sniper.

There were no clues about what motivated Baton’s attempted massacre.

Tongues wagged about the young man’s life story.

There were rumours he had courted a girl when he was about 20 and, when she seemed interested, he thought about ways to make some money and support a family.

He experimented with novel rabbit baits and poisons, but it all went bad.

Some of Batson’s acquaintances, so the story went, copied his idea and made their own successful rabbit bait, and around the same time the girl lost interest and left him.

Now on the run, Batson held up a carriage driven by two sisters, Annie and Margaret Bryant, and forced them at gunpoint to take him to their home, where they lived with their mother.

He demanded a meal and a place to sleep in the shed, but his stay at the Bryant farm was short lived.

In the morning, the search party approached and Batson fled through an orchard, a bullet carrying his black hat clean off his head.

He spent more desperate hours on the run, at one point writing a fake suicide note saying farewell to his mother and explaining he had taken cyanide.

Batson had hoped the ruse would slow the search, but it didn’t.

A newspaper sketch of the shooting site. Picture: Trove

As the net closed in, after shooting at police who were hot on his tail, he swam the Murray to the Victorian side and tried to get back to Barber’s dairy farm where he might take a bagful of food.

But he couldn’t go on forever.

Eventually the weak, bare-footed Batson emerged in a milking shed where two boys were working.

The would-be bushranger begged for a drink of milk and when he clutched a bucket with both hands to quench his thirst, the boys seized him by the arms.

Batson gave up, five days after the picnic shooting.

He was taken by police and charged with the murder of Sheppard, who had died of his wounds, and the shooting of the others.

Batson insisted his victims must have known why he so suddenly turned murderous. He said things had been building for months and he had been rubbed up the wrong way for too long.

But nobody ever knew precisely what the killer meant.

During one hearing, the badly injured victim Richard King even requested a private word with Batson to properly understand why he went wild.

The private conversation was granted, but no sense could be made of the Murray River sniper.

Claude Batson would have been trialled for murder, had he not been committed to an asylum.

Originally published as The eerie tale of the Murray River sniper