Frank Clune (1893–1971)

Another book I was unable to finish. I was expecting an exciting history book about Australia's oldest city, but unfortunately that was not to be found here.

The first few chapters deal with a list of bays and islands and peninsulas in Sydney harbour. Very dry and boring. I hoped the book would improve after that, but discovered that once the tour of the harbour was completed, the list of individual Sydney streets began. I flipped forward to discover that the rest of the book would be like this. I usually pride myself on my ability to read difficult and boring books, but eventually had to admit defeat.… (mais)

I don't know which is more disgusting -- the murders this book describes, or the book itself.

The background: in 1866, four men set out from around a gold rush area in New Zealand for the town of Nelson. They never arrived. Four strangers to the area, Burgess, Kelly, Levy, and Sullivan, were known to have been in the vicinity. All but Levy were known criminals, and all but Burgess were known to have deposited quantities of gold in the banks in Nelson despite having been destitute a few days before. There were no witnesses to the disappearance, and no forensic evidence worthy of the name (this is 1866 in New Zealand, after all). The four were nonetheless imprisoned. And Sullivan -- upon hearing that there would be a free pardon for any informer who could reveal what happened, as long as he was not one of the actual murderers -- decided to step forward. He accurately described the locations of the dead bodies of the missing men (which to that point had not been found); he accurately described another murder which had taken place in the vicinity which the locals had not detected -- and he claimed that, although all four were part of the same gang, the other three had committed the murders and that his hands were clean.

With Sullivan's testimony, the police had enough evidence to think they could hang the other three. And Burgess, the smartest of the four, knew it. He knew he was a dead man -- and so he produced a confession, which agreed with Sullivan's in most particulars, with two exceptions: It said that Burgess and Sullivan had committed the murders, not Burgess, Kelly, and Levy. Burgess, in producing the testimony, had "signed my own death warrant" -- but he was dead anyway. He hoped to get Levy and Kelly off, while having Sullivan hanged.

It didn't work. Burgess, Kelly, and Levy were all tried together, and all went to the gallows; Sullivan, although tried and convicted of another murder, was reprieved.

Who was telling the truth? We can't absolutely know. Burgess was certainly guilty. I have no doubt in my mind that Sullivan and Kelly were guilty. I am slightly more doubtful about Levy, who genuinely had a clean record although he had worked with criminals; he doesn't seem like the murdering type. Not that it helped him.

Those are the facts of the matter, insofar as they are known. And Clune tells those facts. Unfortunately, in between the facts, he insists upon pontificating about the "four Lying Londoners," insisting that crime doesn't pay, that murder will out, that God has the last word. It's like constantly being hit over the head with a Bible. It interrupts the narrative, it moralizes interminably, and it's just bad writing. Clune complains about the moralizing insertions in Burgess's confession -- and then commits the identical fault. And he's so quick to pass judgment that he refuses to acknowledge the problem of proof -- he thinks the four murderers could have been convicted without Sullivan's confession. Personally, I'm not dead sure Levy was guilty (of murder, at least) even with Sullivan's confession, though Levy was certainly an accessory and probably deserved his fate as much as the others. Clune is less a journalist than a pseudo-prophet telling The Truth.

All that makes for a very irritating book. Fortunately, there is a better, newer, more widely available alternative, Wayne Martin's Murder on the Maungatapu. If you want true crime from New Zealand (or are just interested in New Zealand folklore, which is how I came to find out about this), read Martin's book, and if that really intrigues you, you can hold your nose and read Clune's book for the one or two odd facts it has which are not found in Martin.… (mais)