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Australia’s Worst Serial Killer

John Lynch was 19 when he arrived in Australia in 1832, sent here for stealing offences in Ireland. To this day he remains Australia’s most prolific individual serial killer, with nine vicious murders to his name. After working as a convict labourer in the Berrima area of the New South Wales southern highlands, he became a bushranger, robbing, stealing and selling his ill-gotten gains around the district.

In 1835 he was charged with killing a man named Tom Smith. Lynch and two other bushrangers were tried for the murder, but even though he admitted to taking part in killing, the jury chose not to believe him. He was set free. The other two men were hanged.

Lynch continued his activities. One of Lynch’s customers for the property he stole was a farmer named Mulligan. Lynch approached him for payment for some goods but Mulligan wasn’t prepared to pay what Lynch was asking. A bitter argument ensued. Lynch stormed off, swearing revenge. He went to a nearby farm owned by a man named T.B. Humphrey and stole an eight-bullock team. ‘I took them because I wanted to start out again honest,’ Lynch said in a later confession. ‘I intended taking the bullocks to Sydney and selling them.’

It didn’t take long for Lynch to forget about his ‘honest’ new start. ‘At Razorback Mountain, I met a cove named Ireland and fell in with him,’ he said. Ireland was travelling with a young helper, driving a full bullock team and its load of produce to Sydney to deliver it for its owner, Thomas Cowper. ‘It seemed to me,’ confessed Lynch, ‘that it would pay me better to kill Ireland and take possession of the dray and its load of saleable produce than to drive Mr Humphrey’s bullocks to Sydney.’

Ireland took a liking to Lynch. When they pulled up for the night he prepared dinner for Lynch. Meanwhile, Lynch was plotting how to murder Ireland and his helper. As Lynch lay awake, he consulted God as to whether or not he approved. In his confession, Lynch didn’t make it clear whether God actually gave his blessing to the forthcoming killings. The following morning Lynch asked the young boy to help round up the bullocks. As the boy walked ahead in the scrub, Lynch smashed the back of his head in with a tomahawk. He then returned to the camp, finding Ireland preparing breakfast. He explained that the boy had gone looking for the bullocks, and they should eat without him.

When breakfast was cooked and Ireland was about to serve it, Lynch pointed to the scrub. Ireland turned. Lynch cracked his head open with the tomahawk. With the man dead at his feet, Lynch ate the meal, then hid both bodies. Then he pointed Humphrey’s dray and team of bullocks in the direction of Berrima and set them loose, anticipating that someone would round them up and return them to the Oldbury farm. He took Ireland’s team and produce as if it were his own.

Lynch remained at the camp for two days before moving on. As he approached Liverpool, on the southwestern outskirts of Sydney, a man cantered his horse alongside the dray Lynch was driving and asked what Lynch was doing driving his team. It was Thomas Cowper. Lynch smiled. ‘I was just wondering whether I’d knock into you,’ he said. ‘The fact is, your man Ireland was taken ill back there and begged me to take the load to Sydney for you. He said I’d probably meet you somewhere along the way.’ Mr Cowper expressed his gratitude. Lynch explained that he had left Ireland and the boy at the camp where they had stayed overnight. They were probably making their way home. Cowper was even more grateful when Lynch said he would continue to Sydney with the dray and its load while Cowper went back to look for Ireland. He arranged to meet Cowper in Sydney in a few days.

Lynch made good progress. By driving all day and night he reached Sydney two days before he was scheduled to meet Cowper. Realising that he had no time to lose, Lynch employed a drunk to sell the produce so he could not be incriminated later. Heading out of town towards the Berrima Road after pocketing the cash for the produce, Lynch had another shock, which further convinced him that the Lord was on his side. ‘As I neared the George’s River I saw Chief Constable McAlister of Campbelltown, and fearing he’d recognise me, I turned into a cross track leading towards the Berrima Road,’ he said in his confession. ‘This close shave frightened the living daylights out of me, and I decided that I would get rid of Cowper’s team at the first opportunity.’

As Lynch approached Razorback Mountain, where he had killed Ireland, he met the Frazers, a father and son team making their way toward Berrima in a team owned by Mr G. Bawten. Lynch took a liking to the team and started plotting the Frazers’ deaths. He travelled with the pair to a campsite at the Bargo Brush, where two married couples were already camped. ‘We all had supper,’ Lynch said, ‘then I crawled under my dray with the intention of sleeping. No sooner had I got there than I saw a trooper ride into the camp. He asked Frazer if he had seen the dray I had stolen from Cowper, and Frazer shook his head and said he didn’t know nothing about it. The trooper didn’t see me under the dray,’ Lynch said, ‘and much to my surprise, he rode off.’

Lynch believed his escape was a miracle. Yet again the Lord had saved him. He believed he was invincible. Lynch claimed to have consulted with the Lord, who told him that in light of his narrow escape, the Frazers had to be killed. Lynch must take possession of their team. During the night Lynch set his team free. In the morning the three men woke to find them scattered. ‘My team appears to have strayed,’ Lynch told the Frazers. ‘I’ll have to go home and fetch another one. Meanwhile I’d better hide the dray. Could you give me a hand?’ After the men had hidden the dray, Lynch said, ‘I helped them hitch their horses to their cart and we drove out of Bargo Brush. They agreed to let me travel as near the place as possible where I was supposed to live.’

With the incriminating Cowper team and dray disposed of, Lynch relaxed and devised his murder plan. They travelled all day, and made camp at Cordeaux Flat at dusk. ‘In the morning young Frazer and I went in search of the horses,’ said Lynch. ‘I put on my coat so as to hide the tomahawk. I let the youngster go ahead. Then when we were in the bush … I crept up behind him and hit him with one blow. The young fellow fell like a log of wood.’

Lynch hid the boy’s body and returned to the camp with one horse. Mr Frazer inquired about his son. ‘When I told him he was looking for the other horse,’ Lynch said, ‘he became agitated – not because he suspected I killed the boy, but because the horses had never strayed before.’ Lynch distracted Frazer by pointing to what he said was his son in the bushes. When the man turned to look, Lynch killed him with a blow to the back of the head. After thanking the Lord, Lynch buried the bodies in a shallow grave, hitched the Frazers’ team of horses to the dray and headed towards Mulligan’s farm.

As he rode up to the farmhouse he saw Mrs Mulligan sitting on the porch. Lynch inquired as to the whereabouts of her husband and son and daughter. Mrs Mulligan told him they were in the fields working. ‘What do you want?’ the woman inquired.

‘The £30 your husband owes me,’ Lynch replied.

‘What £30?’ Mrs Mulligan asked.

‘You know very well what – for the articles which I got from burglaries and highway robberies I did at the risk of my life and which your old man was supposed to be holding for me,’ Lynch told her.

‘There’s only £9 in the house,’ Mrs Mulligan said.

In his confession Lynch explained, ‘I was much discouraged by her putting me off, but I didn’t show it. Being a fair man, I decided to wait until her husband returned and give him the chance to pay me my money, and if he refused, then I would see to it that he would get to meet the Almighty.’

Lynch walked to the Black Horse Hotel at Berrima and bought some rum. On his return he saw Mr and Mrs Mulligan on the verandah. Mrs Mulligan fetched glasses and they sat drinking and chatting. Lynch eventually brought up the matter of the £30. Mr Mulligan asked him to be reasonable about the amount. Lynch then sat on a nearby log, deep in consultation with the Lord. The Lord gave him His blessing to murder the Mulligans.

After Mr Mulligan returned to the fields and Mrs Mulligan had gone into the house, Lynch lured their young son Johnny into the woods. Once out of sight he killed the boy with a single blow from his axe to the back of his skull.

‘Where’s Johnny?’ Mrs Mulligan asked when Lynch returned.

‘Gone to the paddock with the horses,’ Lynch replied.

According to Lynch, Mrs Mulligan suspected that he had murdered her son. She became hysterical, and told him to fire his gun to attract attention.

‘But if I do it will alert the police,’ Lynch said as Mr Mulligan came out of the house. Mrs Mulligan went back inside. Her husband headed toward the woods in search of his missing son. He didn’t get far. Lynch ran up behind him, and with one swing of the axe knocked him to the ground, dead. After dragging the body into the woods, he saw Mrs Mulligan coming toward him. As she ran into the woods he tripped her and killed her with a blow to the head from the axe.

Lynch knew the Mulligans’ 14-year-old daughter was in the house. As he entered, he saw her standing in the kitchen, holding a butcher’s knife in terror. ‘She was sobbing with fear and trembling violently,’ Lynch later confessed. ‘I hadn’t been prepared for this, so I just stood there staring at her. Then I yelled, “Put that knife down” … She stiffened, her eyes bulging fearfully from their sockets, with a strange animal noise squealing from her tightly compressed mouth. The lobes of her nostrils were flared and she stood there impotent with terror. “Put that knife down,” I told her. “I don’t want to kill you, but if I let you live you’ll only put me away.” I then ordered her to get down on her knees and pray, as she only had 10 minutes to live.’

Lynch then took the young girl into the bedroom and repeatedly raped her. ‘I then brought her back out into the kitchen and tried to comfort her, saying that life was full of trouble and that she’d be better off dead. Then I mercifully distracted her attention, and as she turned away I struck her with the axe and she fell dead without a murmur.’

Lynch assembled the Mulligan family’s bodies in the bush and set them alight on a huge pyre. ‘They burnt like bags of fat,’ he confessed. Lynch then set about making the Mulligan farm his own. Every personal item and all of the dead family’s clothing were burned. He placed an ad in the Sydney Gazette stating that Mrs Mulligan had left the family home without her husband’s consent and that he, John Mulligan, wouldn’t be responsible for her debts. It gave the impression that the Mulligans had broken up. Next, again under the name Mulligan, Lynch wrote to all Mulligan’s creditors, telling them he had sold the farm to a John Dunleavy for £700. Dunleavy had taken responsibility for any outstanding debts. He then forged a deed of assignment stating that John Mulligan had signed over the farm and all its effects to John Dunleavy.

With all in order, Lynch became Dunleavy. For the next six months he lived a charmed existence – and had it not been for murdering an Irishman named Kearns Landregan, he could have possibly lived his life out a free man on the Mulligans’ farm. The only reason Lynch could give for committing his ninth murder, leaving clues and witnesses all over the district in the process, was that he was convinced he was under the protection of the Lord. He didn’t even prepare an alibi for the Landregan killing.

Lynch met Landregan on his way back from a trip to Sydney. He offered Landregan a job fencing on his farm. As they passed Crisp’s Inn, Landregan hid himself, explaining to Lynch that Crisp had summonsed him for stealing a bundle of clothes. ‘After I heard that I was determined to get rid of him,’ Lynch later confessed.

After they had dinner together at the Woolpack Inn, a meal witnessed by the staff and numerous patrons, Lynch drove Landregan to the Ironside Bridge, where they set up camp for the night. As Landregan sat on a log chuckling away at a joke, Lynch snuck up and cracked him over the back of the skull with his tomahawk. But the huge Irishman didn’t die with the first blow. He just rolled to the ground unconscious, a smile still on his face. It took further blows to kill him. Lynch then took £40 from the dead man’s pockets.

Still, if drover Hugh Tinney hadn’t noticed a dingo fossicking around a pile of brushes on 19 February 1841, Landregan’s body may never have been found. Lynch could well have grown old as a respectable farmer. But from items found on the body, Landregan was identified. A barmaid at the Woolpack Inn placed him with Lynch, and Lynch was arrested. On 21 March 1842, just over a year after he was charged, John Lynch was found guilty of murder. He was hanged at Berrima Gaol on 22 April 1842.

With nine murders to his credit, John Lynch is the most prolific individual serial killer in Australia’s history.