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.Shipping, The Age (Melbourne), 21 January 1860, page 4. The passenger list describes Burns as a labourer, aged 19 years and of Irish descent.Page 11, Passenger list, Ship: White Star (master: Thomas Coulter Kerr); Inward Overseas Passenger Lists (British Ports). Microfiche VPRS 7666, copy of VRPS 947. Public Record Office Victoria, North Melbourne, Victoria.
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.Official assisted passage passenger lists, 1845-1886; Series GRG35/48/1; State Records of South Australia, Adelaide.Arrival of the Charlotte Gladstone with Government Immigrants, South Australian Register (Adelaide), 18 June 1866, page 3. Robert and Ellen Burns had eight children born between 1868 and 1880, two of whom died in infancy.Family records (per Ancestry.com).
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. Burns selected a 70-acre block of land near Dunkeld.The Wickliffe Murder: Disagreement of the Jury, 2 March 1883, page 6. By December 1881 Burns's wife and family were living at Stawell.The Stawell Mystery, The Age (Melbourne), 17 August 1882, page 1. 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".The Deep Lead Murder, The Argus (Melbourne), 18 August 1882, page 10.
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.Opening of the Ararat Railway, The Herald (Melbourne), 6 April 1875, page 3. In February 1876 the railway line from Ararat, north-west to Stawell was opened.Opening of the Ararat and Stawell Railway, Hamilton Spectator, 16 February 1876, page 2. This line was extended to Murtoa in December 1878.The Railway to Murtoa, Leader (Melbourne), 21 December 1878, page 13. In April 1877 a railway to the south-west was opened, joining Ararat with Dunkeld. This line was later extended to Hamilton and Portland.Opening of the Railway From Ararat to Dunkeld, Ballarat Star, 24 April 1877, page 2. 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.Denis Rowe, 'The Robust Navvy: The Railway Construction Worker in Northern New South Wales, 1854-1894', Labour History, No. 39 (November 1980), pages 28-46.
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".Heenan-Davies (2020); 'Australia, Victoria, Inquest Deposition Files, 1840-1925', FamilySearch database, entry for Francis Heenan, 21 Feb 1879; citing Probate, Wickliffe, Victoria, Australia, Public Record Office of Victoria, North Melbourne; FHL microfilm.
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".General News, Hamilton Spectator, 21 August 1889, page 4.Extracts from Victoria Police Gazette, New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime (Sydney), 29 September 1880 (Issue No. 39), page 366.The Wickliffe Murder, The Argus (Melbourne), 19 August 1882, page 10.
Police subsequently established the identity of the murdered man as Michael Quinlivan. Quinlivan's siblings, his brother James and married sister Mary Mahoney, both of Coleraine, were able to identify clothes found on the body as those worn by their brother when they last saw him. After Burns was arrested in April 1882 for the murder of 'Scotty' Forbes, police began to investigate whether Burns had any connections to other unsolved murders in the district. Enquiries revealed that from 18 April 1880 both Burns and Quinlivan had been employed in the Wimmera district at Harrow (near Balmoral) by the contractor, Charles Shrive, each receiving eight shillings per day. Shrive considered the two to be "great mates".Suspected Murder Near Dunkeld, Portland Guardian, 13 June 1882, page 2.The Wickliffe Murder, The Argus (Melbourne), 21 July 1883, page 11. 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 Balmoral Quinlivan sent the cheque to the National Bank at Hamilton, which was received and credited to Quinlivan's account. The publican of the Western Hotel in Balmoral, Charles Beggs, later testified the two men left together to go to Horsham (48 miles distance). On June 13 C. J. White, a publican from Horsham, was travelling between Balmoral and Horsham when he met Quinlivan and Burns on the road. He took the men's swags into Horsham for them and the pair stayed at White's hotel, the Bull and Mouth, for a few days "drinking freely". During their stay at Horsham Quinlivan sent £17 to be deposited in the Colonial Bank in Dunkeld. On June 16 Quinlivan and Burns purchased a bottle of brandy and travelled by train from Horsham to Ararat.Horsham Licensing Court, Horsham Times, 19 December 1882, page 2.
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. On June 19 Quinlivan went to the township and withdrew £15 from the Colonial Bank. After withdrawing the money the two men visited Wilson's store in Dunkeld and then proceeded to Reid's hotel at Strathmore (between Dunkeld and Glenthompson). Burns and Quinlivan drank at the hotel for two hours, after which they left with the intention of going to Wickliffe, a distance of 14 miles. This was the last time Quinlivan was seen alive by witnesses.The history of crime..., The Argus (Melbourne), 25 July 1883, page 6.
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".The Wickliffe Murder: Second Trial of Burns for the Murder of Quinlivan, The Herald (Melbourne), 20 July 1883, page 3. 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".
'Scotty' Forbes On 17 January 1882 a miner cutting props for his diggings "on the old track from Stawell to Glenorchy" came upon a headless corpse. The location where the body was found was near the Deep Lead diggings, five miles north-west of Stawell. The miner reported the finding to the Stawell police. The body was naked and had been moved a short distance from its original location by cattle and gnawed at by quolls. Police determined that the head had been severed from the neck by "some sharp instrument". Clothes belonging to the victim were later found in the vicinity.