Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast · Shane L. Waters, Wendy Cee, Gemma Hoskins

Australia: The 1842 Berrima Axe Murderer

·37 min·2 clips

A dingo digging at Ironstone Bridge uncovered a human skull with a tomahawk wound from behind.

On February 19, 1842, Hugh Tinney is driving his team to market near Ironstone Bridge, about seven miles from Barama, when he notices a dingo digging by the creek bank. The animal bolts, and Tinney uncovers a human skull in a shallow grave. The body is still partly intact, dressed in rough laborer's clothes, with a felt hat nearby. That discovery starts a chain of grim revelations. John Lynch has been moving through the district under the name John Dunleavy, and questions begin to surface about where he got his money and property. Chief Constable Chapman identifies the body as Kearns Landrigan. Witnesses remember Lynch, or Dunleavy, with the horse that matched Landrigan's description, and the investigation tightens around him. When the constables go to the Mulligan farm, they find Lynch there, surrounded by property he could not possibly have afforded. Then they start digging. All four Mulligans are found in shallow graves around the property. Lynch is arrested on February 21, 1842, two days after Landrigan's body is discovered. Under questioning, he confesses to killing the Mulligan family, to killing Kearns Landrigan, and to several other men in the Razorback range whose bodies had already been found. The episode also records one more victim from the historical record: an unnamed Aboriginal boy Lynch said he killed during his time in the Razorback. The colonial authorities barely recorded it, and no one investigated the murder. The contrast is hard to miss. A 13-year-old white girl's murder shocked the colony, while an Aboriginal boy's death was filed away as barely worth mentioning. The episode closes by insisting the victims are what matter: they should be remembered for their lives, not reduced to how they died.

As heard by us

A colonial true-crime episode that turns a roadside discovery into a wider reckoning.

Australia: The 1842 Berrima Axe Murderer starts with a dingo at a shallow grave and keeps its footing in the grim ordinary details. From Hugh Tinney at Ironstone Bridge to John Lynch's false identity, the episode lets the dread build slowly, then brings the Mulligan family and…

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Why you'd press play

A roadside grave leads into a colonial murder case and a hard reminder of who was erased.

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