John Lynch
John Lynch was an Irishman who was convicted of the crime of false pretenses (fraud in today’s parlance) and transported to the prison colony of New South Wales, where he was sent to the village of Berrima to work as a cattle handler. Lynch was soon involved with bushrangers – rustlers and scofflaws – who operated along the Australian frontier.
When Lynch and two other men were convicted of killing another man in a dispute the jury did not believe that Lynch struck the fatal blow because of his diminutive size – despite Lynch’s confessing to the crime. Lynch was set free and his comrades hanged.
Not happy handling other people’s cattle led him to steal some of his own, hoping to sell them in the burgeoning town of Sydney. En route Lynch encountered other cattle drivers and expanded his herd by taking the cattle and killing their owners. Lynch was convinced that God approved of his killing, as He had demonstrated by sparing Lynch from conviction and hanging earlier.
Lynch’s preferred method of killing involved a heavy blow to the back of the head with a large ax or tomahawk, after which the bodies would be disposed of by either internment in a shallow grave or burning. Between 1835 and 1841 he would claim at least ten victims in this manner before being caught. At his trial he proclaimed his innocence, again protected (in his mind) by the Lord’s approval of his actions. This time it took less than an hour for a jury to convict him and he was hanged in Berrima in April 1842.