4
Mad Mossy
swagmen, or ‘swaggies’ – a part of our Australian legend – roamed the outback during the late 1920s and 1930s, looking for work in a country gripped by the Depression. Often these men wouldn’t be seen for months, even years, at a time. They were perfect prey for opportunists such as Albert Andrew Moss.
Born in Narromine, NSW, in 1885, Moss was a thief, conman, rapist and serial murderer. Convicted of stealing by the time he was 17, he lived by theft and false pretences. A big man with no friends, he had a long criminal record and a reputation for arrogance and violence. He had no schooling, boasted that he was illiterate and regularly served time in jail.
Moss hated incarceration and the hard labour that went with it, so every time he was caught for a crime, he would convince the court he was insane and get sent to a mental asylum instead. When apprehended he would aggressively resist arrest, froth at the mouth and gag on his own tongue. Fronting up to court on a wide variety of offences over the years – including sheep stealing, breaking and entering, shop stealing, and the attempted rape and assault of a schoolgirl – ‘Mad Mossy’ beat the system every time.
While it’s believed he started killing around January 1933, Moss’s career as a murderer officially began in December 1938 with William Henry Bartley. Bartley, 41, was a travelling leather-worker from Sydney who picked up work with a Narromine stockman named Carpenter.
Carpenter ordered a custom-made leather rope and supplied the leather. On 9 December, Bartley set up at Mack’s Reserve, near Moss’s camp, on the banks of the Macquarie River. Carpenter recalled later that as he delivered the leather to Bartley, he noticed Moss hanging around the camp. When Carpenter returned two days later, he found no sign of either man.
When Moss was later seen riding a bicycle identical to Bartley’s, he explained that it had been given to him by a bloke who had won a lottery in Sydney and was in such a hurry to claim the prize he had given Moss his clothes and gear as well.
A few days later, Timothy O’Shea, 50, drove into the reserve in his sulky and two horses. He set up camp and invited Moss over for a drink. O’Shea was reputed to be carrying a lot of money. That night he disappeared. Several other swaggies camping nearby later reported seeing a big fire blazing where his camp had been.
A few days later, a man named John Neville saw Moss driving around in what looked like O’Shea’s sulky, with one horse pulling it and another trailing behind on a rope. When approached, Moss explained that he had become friendly with O’Shea, who had left for Western Australia in a hurry to meet friends who had struck it rich. O’Shea, Moss explained, had asked him to look after his things until he got back.
Although he didn’t believe the story, and was in fear of Moss and what he was obviously capable of, Neville agreed to join him in a bottle of wine … and listened as the drunken swagman told tales that suggested he had murdered other swaggies in his travels. Moss became belligerent as he told Neville of the demise of a man named Jack Stewart at nearby Gilgandra, implying it was he who had committed the crime. When Neville tried to sneak away, Moss grabbed him and kicked him in the chest. He would have killed him had Neville not grabbed the empty bottle, smashed it over Moss’s head and escaped.
The following morning Moss was gone. He showed up soon after at nearby Narromine, buying drinks at the bar from a large wad of notes. Moss stayed there until after Christmas, then found his way back to Mack’s Reserve, where he camped near a swaggie with an old horse and a battered sulky as transport – 68-year-old pensioner Thomas Robinson.
Robinson was well known, and was respected throughout the district. He was also openly critical of Moss, and made no bones about warning people to beware of him. Aware that Moss was camping nearby, Robinson took off in his sulky. Moss followed him for 10 days, and finally caught up on the night of 21 January, at a spot known as Brummagen Creek. That evening the reserve was the scene of a huge fire that started at Robinson’s campsite and spread to become a large bushfire. When local farmers looked for the culprits the next day the reserve was empty.
Moss was next sighted at nearby Dubbo, six weeks later. This time his means of transport – Robinson’s horse and sulky – was identified by the stockman Carpenter, who was a close friend of Robinson and recognised his outfit immediately. Moss denied it, claiming it was his. Carpenter called the authorities, saying Robinson had been done away with. In their inquiries, police learned that a good number of men had gone missing over the years. Among them were Timothy O’Shea and Bill Bartley, both of whom had been last seen with Albert Moss – who had acquired their possessions. But without any bodies, authorities had little evidence to prove murder.
Police pulled together every resource they could, and piece by piece, gathered the evidence that would eventually put Albert Moss behind bars. They discovered Moss had sold Bill Bartley’s bicycle and Tim O’Shea’s possessions. The few swaggies they interviewed who had been in Moss’s company recalled him speaking of the difficulty of destroying all the evidence of a murdered man. In particular, they said he mentioned that teeth would never burn.
With Moss safely behind bars in Dubbo, charged with the theft of Robinson’s horse and sulky, police examined every camp reserve he may have stayed at within 100 miles (160 kilometres), paying particular attention to the ashes of the fires. At Mack’s Reserve, bloodstained clothing was found, and human teeth and tunic buttons were discovered in the ashes of a fire. In the bushes nearby they found a bag containing Tim O’Shea’s reading glasses. When he was told that O’Shea’s possessions had been traced to him, and that police had found some of the man’s remains, Moss confessed to the murder.
When taken to Brummagen Reserve and questioned about the suspected murder of Thomas Robinson, Moss tried his insanity act, leaping about like a wallaby, eating grass and imitating a crow. But police knew about his charade by now. Moss eventually confessed to killing Robinson, claiming he had thrown the body down a disused mine shaft. But after finding more human teeth in a camp fire at Brummagen Creek, police were convinced the old man had been killed and burnt, just like O’Shea.
Albert Moss was charged with the murders of Bartley (whose remains were never found), Robinson and O’Shea, but was only convicted of the latter two. In court he went through the insanity routine once again, but authorities revealed that the mouth-frothing was aided by a bar of soap.
On 26 September 1939, Moss was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging. He managed to convince the state’s best psychiatrists that he wasn’t the full quid, and the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
He made many confessions while in prison, the most consistent being that he had killed 13 swaggies in all. The NSW Government’s consulting psychiatrist at the time, Dr John McGeorge, said, ‘Of all the hundreds of killers I have examined professionally, Moss was the most brutal and most cunning.’
Albert Andrew Moss died in Long Bay Penitentiary Hospital on 24 January 1958, after a long illness.