Robert Francis Burns

Robert Francis Burns (1840 – 25 September 1883) was an Irish Australian murderer and probable serial killer. He was hanged at Ararat Gaol in September 1883, convicted of the murder of Michael Quinlivan near Wickliffe in western Victoria. After Burns's death the hangman made a sensational claim that the prisoner had stated to him, prior to the execution, that he had murdered eight people in total, five in Victoria and three in New South Wales. The revelation prompted speculation in the colonial press, attempting to identify other murder victims with whom Burns had been associated.

Biography

Early life Robert Francis Burns was born in 1840 in County Limerick in Ireland.

Emigration and marriage Burns arrived in Australia as part of the mass migration largely stimulated by the gold-rushes of the 1850s. He emigrated to the colony of Victoria aboard the White Star, a ship of the White Star Line, which departed from Liverpool in England and arrived in Melbourne on 19 January 1860. The passenger list describes Burns as a labourer, aged 19 years and of Irish descent.

In January 1868 Burns married Ellen O'Leary at Mount Gambier in South Australia. O'Leary was a recent immigrant to Australia; born at Killarney in county Kerry, Ireland, she arrived in Adelaide in June 1866 aboard the immigrant vessel Charlotte Gladstone, accompanied by her older brother Cornelius and younger sister Johanna. Robert and Ellen Burns had eight children born between 1868 and 1880, two of whom died in infancy.

During the early 1870s Burns and his family were living at Allendale East, in the Mount Gambier district. By 1877 the family had relocated to the Hamilton district in Victoria, living at Dunkeld from 1878. By December 1881 Burns's wife and family were living at Stawell. When he was arrested in April 1882 Burns told a police constable that his wife and children were "living near the police station at Stawell".

Burns was probably attracted to the Hamilton and Stawell districts by the proliferation of work opportunities offered by the construction of railways in the colony of Victoria. The rail link from Ballarat to Ararat opened in April 1875, leading to further railway works in the Ararat district as the township developed into a major rail junction. In February 1876 the railway line from Ararat, north-west to Stawell was opened. This line was extended to Murtoa in December 1878. In April 1877 a railway to the south-west was opened, joining Ararat with Dunkeld. This line was later extended to Hamilton and Portland. The railway worker, or navvy, was employed by contractors to provide the manual labour to fell trees, lay sleepers and tracks, excavate cuttings and construct embankments. The workers lived in tent camps, with only basic necessities, located near the construction works.

Death of Heenan

From about January 1879 Burns was working with a gang of railway navvies near Wickliffe, east of Dunkeld. He shared a tent with two other men, Henry Wells and Francis Heenan. On February 19 Heenan left the work-site and transacted business at a bank in the township. On his return (as Burns later testified) Heenan reported to his work-mates he was feeling ill; he was vomiting, had diarrhoea and complained of feeling cold. Heenan remained at the work-site until mid-afternoon, when he travelled by train the two miles to his tent. His work-mates gave him some rum and porter, but he continued "vomiting and purging" and died early that evening. The policeman, Constable Healy, attended the scene and, as he told the inquest held two days later: "I ascertained that he and his mate were on very friendly terms and found no marks on the body and could not have any circumstances to foul play". The magistrate who held the inquest into Heenan's death concluded "that the deceased died of an attack of English Cholera". He added: "The symptoms detailed by his mate were consistent with that disease and the post mortem appearance did not indicate any appearance of poison having been taken".

Murder of Quinlivan On 16 August 1880 the fully-clothed body of a man, aged about 30 to 40 years, was found during the mustering of sheep in a paddock at Reedy Creek, about seven miles north-west of Wickliffe. The body had been lying "some weeks before it was found, and was much decomposed". The dead man was face downwards and a large portion of the back part of the skull was fractured. A leather purse was found near the body. A magisterial inquiry was held at Wickliffe on August 18 which delivered a finding of "wilful murder against some person or persons unknown". Dr. William Jones of Lake Bolac made a post mortem examination of the body and estimated the man had died about six weeks previously, on or about July 1, and that the death was caused by a fracture of the skull inflicted by "a blunt iron instrument".

Police subsequently established the identity of the murdered man as Michael Quinlivan. The two men had become friends while working on the contract, they being the only two Irishmen in the party. The contractor, Shrive, described Quinlivan as "a quiet saving man". They had left his employment on June 8, with Quinlivan receiving a cheque for £16.4s, of which about £4.4s belonged to Burns.

At Ararat the two men stayed at Catherine Miller's boarding-house where Quinlivan was "very sick" and "was vomiting all night". Quinlivan claimed he had become sick after drinking from the liquor bottle during the train trip. The men had been planning to continue by train to Dunkeld "to give Burns' wife some money", but Quinlivan insisted on staying at Ararat when he became ill. The next morning Quinlivan was feeling better and he and Burns took the train to Dunkeld where they stayed on Burns's selection.

By the gathering of evidence for these sequence of events, police established that Burns was the last man seen in the deceased's company "within a short distance from the spot where the mutilated body of Quinlivan was found". Burns wrote a letter on 6 September 1880 to Quinlivan's siblings in Coleraine which spoke of Quinlivan selecting land in Gippsland and how Burns had offered to lend their brother £100 free of interest for twelve months. In a subsequent letter Burns wrote to James Quinlivan stating "he had not seen or heard" from Quinlivan "since he left to interview his relations at Coleraine". When the matter came before the Stawell Assizes it was postponed on the application of the Crown as the prisoner had only recently been committed. In addition, Burns was asserting that Forbes was alive, so the postponement would enable the Crown to test that statement.

Police enquiries subsequently revealed that from about October to December 1881 Burns and 'Scotty' Forbes had been work-mates on the extension of the railway line from Horsham to Dimboola. Burns and Forbes were frequently in each other's company. Forbes sold a watch to Burns who paid for it with a valueless cheque. As soon as Burns gained possession of the watch he had pawned it at Sonenberg's shop in Stawell. On the proceeds of the transaction the two men went on a "drinking bout" and Forbes was last seen heading towards Glenorchy in company with Burns, taking with them a gallon of whiskey. Later Burns arrived alone at Glenorchy. Soon afterwards at the Stawell races Burns was asked by an acquaintance about the whereabouts of 'Scotty', and Burns replied that "he had cleared off to New South Wales". In January 1882 Burns was working in a road-making gang at Murtoa. On January 20, a few days after newspaper reports appeared regarding the discovery of the headless body near Deep Lead, Burns asked a work-mate named Michael Carrick to write out a letter "for a man named Charlie Forbes, who was working on a farm near Minyip" (70 miles north of Stawell). Burns said he wanted Carrick to write the letter "so that the person receiving it would not know the handwriting". The letter, regarding arrangements for redeeming Forbes' watch, was sent to George Fergus, publican of the European Hotel in Stawell. However, the identity of the murder victim was never established beyond doubt and the evidence at the trial was purely circumstantial and Burns was acquitted.

Burns was arrested by Detective Brown for the murder of Michael Quinlivan as he left the Supreme Court after being acquitted of the Deep Lead murder.

During his six-month period as a remand prisoner in the Hamilton gaol, Burns was treated with extreme wariness by the prison warders who considered his nature to be volatile and savage. During the last three months of his confinement the prisoner barely slept at night, "his rest being broken by most hideous roars and cries". The police sleeping a hundred yards from the gaol were "nightly disturbed by his roaring".

The second trial of Robert Francis Burns for the murder of Quinlivan was commenced in the Hamilton courthouse on 19 July 1883 before the Chief Justice of Victoria, Sir William Stawell. After a protracted and occasionally contentious jury selection process had been completed, Burns pleaded not guilty. Once again there was a large number of witnesses who gave evidence, including a new witness named Dickson who stated that he saw Burns and Quinlivan in Bell's paddock, near where the body was found. On Monday, July 23, Burns was brought before the court and sentenced to death by Justice Stawell.

Confession and execution

After his conviction Burns was held at Ararat Gaol, where the Roman Catholic priest, Father Meade, was "in constant attendance on him". Efforts were made to get Burns to make a full confession, both for the murder of Quinlivan "and others he is accredited with killing", but to no avail. In this regard, he was described as being "callously indifferent to all the entreaties".

In the week before his execution, Burns's wife and children "paid him a farewell visit". During the visit Ellen Burns, having "implicit faith" in the innocence of her husband, "was loud in execration, and hurled some most opprobrious epithets at the gaoler and wardens".

The hanging was witnessed by about 30 spectators, in addition to gaol officials and members of the police force. Initial reports stated that Burns "never spoke after leaving his cell", but handed a statement to the sheriff. The statement contained no admission of guilt, but was an expression of thanks for the treatment he received at the hands of the governor and other gaol officials, for the "exertions of his solicitor and counsel, and for the spiritual offices of the Rev. Father Meade". As later detailed in a written declaration by Upjohn, Burns answered: "I have cooked eight, five in Victoria and three in Sydney, and now you are going to cook me". Upjohn's account was disputed by others in the cell at the time, who claimed they heard no such exchange. In discussing the probability of such an occurrence, a writer for Melbourne's The Herald newspaper pointed out that Burns "desired to make a confession", but had been restrained by Father Meade. The writer considered it highly likely "that he should seize the opportunity of saying a few words to Upjohn, thus gratifying his vanity or love of notoriety". A later article in the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express provided additional information and context regarding the New South Wales murder. The backgrounds and circumstances of the deaths of those detailed in the two articles are listed below (arranged chronologically according to the date of death):

Richard Going – born in county Tipperary, Ireland, in about 1821. He lived and worked on the Kingower gold-field when the diggings first opened in the mid-1850s. In 1871 Going re-located to Sandhurst (Bendigo) during a mining boom at that place. He purchased shares in a number of gold-mining companies based at Sandhurst, but ultimately "he lost all he had previously made". He then returned to Kingower, and afterwards lived in the Berlin (Rheola) district, about mid-way between Bendigo and St. Arnaud. At the time of his death in December 1877 Richard Going was living in a bark hut on the Orville gold-field, about three miles from Berlin; his nearest neighbour was a man named McGee, whose dwelling was about three hundred yards away. On Friday morning, 7 December 1877, McGee saw that Going's hut had been burnt down. On investigation he found "the calcined bones" of Going amongst the ashes. An inquest into the death of Richard Going was held on the following Monday at Rheola. The coroner's summing up favoured a verdict of accidental death, but the jury returned an open verdict, stating it was their belief there was insufficient evidence to determine the cause of death. The jury requested that the substance supposed to be blood and other materials from the scene be forwarded by police to the Government analyst. It was reported that many residents of the neighbourhood were quite convinced Going had been murdered. Francis Heenan – born at Roscrea, county Tipperary, Ireland, in about 1845, the son of Denis Heenan and Mary Dwyer. He worked as a labourer on a railway line in the area of Wickliffe, a small town near Ararat. In February 1879 Francis Heenan was sharing a tent with two men: Robert Francis Burns and Henry Wells. They had been working in the same gang for about a month. Heenan died suddenly on 19 February 1879. An inquest concluded he died "of an attack of English Cholera", but police later suspected he had been poisoned by Burns. His remains were exhumed in October 1882 but the analyses that were undertaken were inconclusive. Unknown male – On 26 August 1879 a resident of Wagga Wagga was walking near the river at the rear of St. John's church when his dog began "scratching and barking over a particular spot", from which "a most offensive smell" was emanating. After scraping away the loose gravel he discovered a body had been buried there. After the find was reported to the police it was ascertained the remains were of a man, entirely unclothed, whose head had been severed from his body. A search was made for the head, or other clues to identify the man, without result. The location where the body was found was "close to a track used by used by carters of sand and gravel from the river bank" and the body had been covered by gravel screenings left at the site. The general vicinity was often used as a camping ground for travellers. At the coroner's inquest it was determined the man had been dead for about three weeks or a month. After Burns's arrest and execution in Victoria, the New South Wales Inspector-General of Police obtained a photograph of Burns to assist with police enquiries into the Wagga Wagga murder. Two persons subsequently identified Burns as the man who was engaged in 1879 by the railway contractor, George Cornwall, to excavate a cutting on the railway line at Gerogery, 19 miles north of Albury. Two others, including a local publican, stated that the man in the photograph was 'knocking about' Wagga Wagga at the time the headless body was found. Michael Quinlivan – born in about 1845 in county Clare, Ireland, the son of James Quinlivan and Bridget (née McGuan). Burns was convicted of Quinlivan's murder in July 1883. This appears to be a mistaken reference to Robert Burns (alias Whyte), sentenced to 10 years' transportation in Edinburgh, Scotland, who arrived in Western Australia aboard the Norwood in June 1862. Robert Francis Burns, the subject of this article, emigrated to Victoria in January 1860 aboard the White Star (as clearly stated on his prisoner record sheet held in the Victorian Public Record Office and available online).

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