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SYDNEY — Australia's most notorious outlaw Ned Kelly, dead for 126 years, is again eluding authorities.
Mr. Kelly, who became a folk hero of Australia's colonial past with his gangs' daring bank robberies and police shoot outs, was hanged for his crimes in 1880 and buried in a mass prison grave.
But now authorities say Mr. Kelly has again gone missing — his remains that is. It seems Mr. Kelly's remains were dug up during drainage works in the 1950s and discarded.
Recent archaeological tests of the mass grave area of Pentridge Prison in the southern city of Melbourne failed to find any remains, said Ray Tonkin, head of Heritage Victoria.
Mr. Kelly was hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1880 and his remains, together with those of other executed prisoners, were moved to Pentridge in the 1920s and 1930s and buried in a mass grave. Until recently, authorities believed all executed inmates were buried in a designated area within the prison grounds.
“Based on the information available to us, we now believe these remains were probably removed in the 1950s or 1960s, as part of the installation of large service pipes that took place at the prison at the time,” Mr. Tonkin told reporters on Monday.
Mr. Kelly is Australia's most famous outlaw or bushranger.
After evading police for two years, he and his gang were finally trapped in bushland in the southern Victoria state on June 28, 1880. In a defiant last stand the pistol-wielding Mr. Kelly, dressed in homemade armour hammered out of plow blades, walked towards police with guns blazing.
Mr. Kelly was shot in the legs, arms and groin more than 20 times before he was arrested. The rest of his gang was killed in the shootout. Mr. Kelly was hanged on Nov. 11, 1880 for the murder of three policemen. He was aged 25.
Archaeologists have been trying to locate the grave sites of up to 44 prisoners who were executed at Melbourne Gaol and buried at Pentridge Prison.
“There are records that when the bodies were dug up at the Melbourne Gaol in 1929 they were just put in sacks, they weren't treated very sympathetically,” said archaeologist Jeremy Smith.
Mr. Smith said he believed this was the fate of Mr. Kelly's remains, but that he would extend the archaeological dig in the hope of finding the outlaw's remains.
Debate about Mr. Kelly's place in Australian history has raged for decades over whether Mr. Kelly was a hero, a lovable rogue who fought the colonial British establishment, or whether he was simply a horse-thieving killer surrounded by a gang of thugs.
Films have portrayed Mr. Kelly as a hero, from one of the world's first feature length films, the 1906 silent movie The Story of the Kelly Gang, to the 1970s version starring the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger to Hollywood star Heath Ledger's 2003 film.
