32. End of the Road
John Lynch, styling himself John Dunleavy, got away with literal murder for years. Then in 1841, a cattle herder came upon the bludgeoned corpse of a local last seen a few days earlier having dinner with a farmer named John Dunleavy. A police investigation was launched, and Dunleavy’s story about having “purchased” his farm from the Mulligans in 1835 began to crack.
Finally, a barmaid came forward and identified John Dunleavy and John Lynch as being the same person. Lynch was charged with murder, and at the end of his trial, it took the jury less than an hour to find him guilty. He was sentenced to death, and hanged in 1842.