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Shortly after three on the afternoon of Friday December 30 1921, Melbourne cab driver Joseph Graham was strolling up Little Collins Street on his way to the grocery store. All of a sudden, a piercing, high-pitched scream rang out. The area was notoriously rowdy, but in the hundreds of times that Joseph had been there, he'd never heard such a heart-rending scream.
He described it as sounding like "a little girl terrified at what was occurring or what was about to occur." Joseph estimated that the girl was between the ages of 10 and 15. It sounded as if she was being dragged somewhere close by. Five or six more screams followed, each more terrifying than the last, as the girl was slowly drained of energy. Further down the street, another man also heard the screams.
He and Joseph glanced around, trying to identify where exactly the noise was coming from. While they couldn't narrow down an exact spot, they seemed to be coming from the direction of Garnalli. When Joseph Graham heard about Alma Turschke's murder a little over a week later, he went straight to the police to report the screams he'd heard on Little Collins Street on the afternoon of December 30.
The officers didn't seem interested. Plenty of people brought their children into the city and it wasn't unusual to hear them screeching for a litany of innocent reasons. Some local business owners brought their children to work with them, including a nearby barber, whose young daughter was known for her screeching. Despite these explanations, Joseph remained certain that what he'd heard wasn't just a child playfully acting up.
Meanwhile, at a police station in the regional town of Ballarat, the other man who heard the screams also came forward. Like Joseph, he reported that the screaming occurred sometime between around 3:05 and 3:25 pm. But unlike Joseph, he didn't think there were multiple screams, just a single scream that echoed down the street.
He thought it was emanating from a derelict lodging house next to Gunn Alley, but as he walked towards the distressing sound, it suddenly stopped. The man convinced himself it was just an unruly child being disciplined by an exasperated parent and carried on with his day. When he heard about Alma Turshki's murder, he thought about contacting the police, but he was unwell at the time and didn't want the publicity.
He also assumed the other witness, Joseph Graham, would report it, thus negating his need to do so. When the days passed with no reports about the screams in the papers, he finally decided to come forward, saying there was a stallholder in the Eastern Market who could corroborate his version of events. Ballarat Police forwarded this information to the detectives fronting the Turshki case.
They now had two independent accounts of a girl screaming in fright around Little Collins Street between 3 and 3:30pm on Friday December 30. These reports aligned with the last confirmed sighting of Alma Turski after she left the Eastern Arcade, on the very corner where the lodging house was located. This posed a major problem for investigators.
They'd been working on the theory that Alma had been lured somewhere private to be assaulted before her body was dumped in Gun Alley later that night. What's more, if the screams heard had indeed come from Alma, it vindicated their prime suspect, Colin Ross. When Colin Ross was found guilty of the 12-year-old's murder, his family were left stunned. From the outset of the investigation, they knew there was no way he could have done it.
For starters, Colin's brother, Stanley Ross, worked alongside Colin at the Australian Wine Saloon. At around 2pm on Friday December 30 1921, Stanley was in his usual spot behind the bar when Colin arrived for work. It was a relatively quiet afternoon. The brothers spent the entire afternoon serving and interacting with the few clientele.
At no point did Stanley see a young girl matching Alma Tershki's description in the saloon. Colin sometimes brought women into the private room behind the bar, but they were never as young as Alma. Former bartender Ivy Matthews and saloon customer Francis Upton had both served as star witnesses for the prosecution, implicating Colin in the young girl's murder.
Both claimed they had been drinking at the Australian Wine Saloon Friday December 30 1921, where they ordered drinks at the bar. But Stanley had been behind the bar all afternoon and at no point did he see either one of them. The only witness he did see was Olive Maddix. Olive had testified to seeing an underage girl matching Alma's description drinking in the parlour and had confronted Colin about it.
Yet, according to Stanley, this never happened. Olive did briefly greet Colin at the bar, but the pair didn't engage in any meaningful conversation and she never mentioned the presence of a young girl. Stanley and Colin remained at the saloon together until closing time, at which point Colin went home for dinner while Stanley ate at a nearby restaurant. At 7:30pm, Stanley returned to the saloon to use the bathroom.
No one else was in there. Colin had always maintained that he'd met his friend Gladys in the city before returning home at around midnight and going straight to bed. His mother, Edie Ross, vouched for this. She recalled that Colin had arrived home at around 7pm, ate dinner, and then went out again. Edie was still up when Colin returned around midnight. He went straight to the bedroom he shared with another of his brothers, Ronald.
A military man who'd served overseas, Ronald was a light sleeper who woke at the slightest of noises. He stirred when Colin entered the room and was certain he couldn't have left during the night without waking him. According to prosecution witness Sydney Harding, Colin had confessed to killing Alma in the back room behind the bar before cleaning the scene.
Stanley Ross had returned to the Australian Wine Saloon on Saturday morning to prepare for the day's trade. He swept the floor and scrubbed surfaces. There was no indication that the saloon or its back room had been cleaned the previous night. The Ross family testified at trial in support of Colin and corroborated his version of events. Edie described Colin as a good son who was a bit rough around the edges, but certainly not a child killer.
Another one of Colin's brothers named Thomas told the court that when the family heard news of Colin's arrest, they found it comical in its absurdity. Thomas explained: "I thought that my brother would have been the last man in the world to be detained." To outsiders, the Ross family were just protecting one of their own. No one seemed to consider the possibility that they were telling the truth.
After Colin's conviction, his family gathered at their home to plot their next move. They agreed without hesitation to mortgage their house to fund an appeal. All of a sudden, there was a knock at the front door. Standing outside was a young woman who introduced herself as Florence Rudkin. She was well aware of the infamous Terschke case.
The vicious frenzy it had stirred up in Melbourne had prevented Florence from coming forward sooner as she wanted no association with it. But with Colin being found guilty, Florence put her personal feelings aside to reveal what she knew. At around 5 on the afternoon of Friday December 30 1921, Florence had stopped in at the Australian Wine Saloon. She visited occasionally as it was a quiet establishment where she could be left alone.
Florence settled into a dark corner in the parlor. It was an uneventful visit until Olive Maddox dropped in. Boisterous and unsteady, Olive was clearly intoxicated. She stood at the parlor's entrance and examined the room before moving off. Florence was still in the parlor when Olive reappeared an hour later, right before closing time. When Florence went to leave, Colin Ross was still there.
She caught a glimpse of the private room behind the bar. There was no one there. The reason Florence felt it was so important to come forward with this information was that she had flowing red hair. At the time of her visit to the saloon, she'd been wearing a hat, just like Alma Tershki. Given that the parlour was dimly lit and Olive Maddox had been intoxicated, Florence feared that Olive had mistaken her for Alma.
Stanley Ross had remembered Florence Rudkin as one of their few customers that day. He'd sought her out when his brother was initially detained, but he only knew her as Flory and was unable to track her down. Florence Rudkin was told to take her story to a man named Thomas Brennan. An experienced and formidable criminal attorney, Brennan was one part of Collins' two-man legal team.
Like the Rosses, Brennan was left speechless by Colin's conviction. He'd never doubted the man was innocent, and after hearing the entirety of the prosecution's evidence in person, he couldn't believe the jury had found him guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In the defense's opinion, the prosecution's case was not only absolutely incoherent, but absolutely inconsistent.
After detailing all of its flaws and inconsistencies, they were certain Colin was going to walk from court a free man. As far as the defence were concerned, the prosecution's star witnesses were a quintet of disreputables. For starters, there was Francis Upton, the man who claimed to have visited the Australian Wine Saloon after midnight on December 30 to encounter Colin Ross with blood-stained hands.
Francis had also implicated an unidentified woman, who he claimed to have heard in the saloon with Colin. Thomas Brennan was incredulous of Francis' testimony from the outset. In Brennan's words, Francis was "a derelict, a drunkard, a wiped deserter, a notorious romancer, and convicted criminal." His rap sheet included charges for larceny, drunkenness, and embezzlement.
In court, Francis described himself as a bad character who'd skipped out on his wife and kids and spent all his earnings on alcohol. Brennan hoped the jury would realise that testimony beginning with the witness regaining consciousness in a park after a bender necessitated a considerable degree of scepticism. Francis even admitted during cross-examination that he usually got so drunk he didn't remember anything.
In fact, he was such a prolific alcoholic that he had no memories of ever visiting the Australian Wine Saloon, except for on December 30. Francis said he'd learnt of Alma Turski's murder on January 2, yet he only approached police to implicate Colin Ross after the £1,000 reward was offered. Then there were the two jailbirds, Sydney Harding and Joseph Dunstan.
Sidney testified that Colin had confessed to killing Alma while they were in the prison yard. Joseph corroborated this, saying he overheard parts of the confession. Thomas Brennan had explained to the jury why they should be wary of these claims. Sidney and Joseph were convicted criminals with a history including assault, larceny, receiving stolen goods, and even perjury.
Not only were they known to one another, they were on remand for a housebreaking they committed together. Sydney Harding had come forward to the police before the coronial inquest, but after the big reward was announced. After establishing himself as a star prosecution witness, Sydney was permitted to leave the confines of jail and live in far cosier lodgings near the city.
It was a fitting prize for a man other prisoners referred to as a "dog" due to his reputation as a snitch. Colin Ross knew of Sidney's dishonourable notoriety and in no way considered him a friend. Thomas Brennan assumed the jury would realise how comical the whole set up was. Why would his client trust a criminal he barely knew who had a reputation for leaking information to police?
During one prison visit, Colin's legal team had warned him: "Say nothing. They'll plant people in here to testify against you." It made no sense for him to then go and divulge everything about the murder to a random inmate. Joseph Dunstan came forward to police after the coronial inquest, but before the trial. He admitted that he'd spoken to Sidney before making his statement.
Both men also revealed that they'd read the Daily Paper together, which featured detailed updates on the Tershki case. These stories included all the evidence, Colin's version of events, and the allegations other witnesses had made against him. Another prisoner on remand with the two witnesses claimed that he'd overheard Sydney tell Joseph, "'I have told you about Ross, and I will fix you up after the trial.'
Thomas Brennan knew better than most that assertions made by prison snitches should be considered with extreme caution. Sidney and Joseph had proven themselves liars in the past, pleading innocent for crimes they were ultimately found guilty of. Criminals usually didn't help the police unless there was something in it for them. The jury were told to consider the likelihood the pair were offered a deal to testify against Colin.
As for Ivy Matthews, the former bartender who claimed to have seen Alma Turski drinking in the private room behind the bar of the Australian Wine Saloon, the defence had some serious doubts about her story. Ivy was first interviewed by detectives almost a week after Alma's body was discovered. At that time, Ivy said she hadn't seen Alma and knew nothing about what had happened to her.
It was only weeks later that she came forward to police with her story implicating Colin Ross in the crime. When asked why she hadn't revealed this pertinent information during her first interview, Ivy said as a former employee of Colin's, she felt a degree of loyalty to him. Both Ivy Matthews and Olive Maddox claimed to have seen a girl matching Alma Turschke's description drinking at the saloon on the afternoon of December 30.
Colin had allegedly confessed to giving Alma upwards of three glasses of wine prior to the attack. However, Alma's stomach had been examined post-mortem for traces of alcohol, and none were found. During Colin's trial, the defense pointed out that both Ivy and Olive had added more damning claims against Colin every time they were interviewed.
Not only did they come forward after the £1,000 reward was on offer, they also revealed key information only when the same information had just been reported by the press. Ivy and Olive were long-time friends who admitted to having discussed the case on multiple occasions before and after Colin's arrest. As far as the defence were concerned, the two women had colluded to falsely accuse Colin in a bid to claim the reward money.
While the women claimed that they were amicable with Colin, he said otherwise. Olive and Colin had a temperamental history with one another and hadn't spoken for months. Meanwhile, Ivy had been aggressively demanding money from him that she felt was owed to her. She was also bitter about having lost her job at the saloon, with Colin asserting that Ivy would, quote, "...do anything for spite to get even with him."
Casefile will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. As the defense pointed out, the only moments where the five key witnesses' stories aligned was when they were presenting information that had been published in the papers.
The other mysteries of the case, such as how exactly Alma came to be in the saloon and how her body was disposed of, conflicted between accounts. Colin had allegedly told Ivy that Alma approached him and asked for a drink. In Sydney's version of events, it was Colin who coaxed the girl into his saloon.
Ivy said she'd seen Alma in the room behind the bar at 3pm, while Olive said she saw Alma at 5pm in the parlour. In Ivy's version, Alma was awake and alert when the attack commenced. In Sydney's account, Alma was unconscious. Ivy said Colin had driven back to the city in the early hours, while Sydney claimed he rode a bicycle.
Depending on the witness, Alma's body was either driven or carried to Gun Alley. The timings of all these happenings conflicted, and when taken as a whole, were completely incoherent. Colin's alleged descriptions of Alma also didn't add up. Those who knew Alma best said she was a shy and naive girl with a quiet temperament.
Accounts from the so-called Quintet of Disreputals had Colin saying Alma was a cheeky little devil who demanded alcohol, was forthright with men and sexually active. The defence felt there was no way Colin could have interacted with Alma and come away with such an inaccurate character assessment. None of this even took into account the assertions of other witnesses. Sixty other customers visited the Australian Wine Saloon on December 30.
Based on the statements provided by Olive Maddox and Ivy Matthews, Alma was in the saloon for upwards of three hours that afternoon. Yet, aside from those two women, no one else saw her. Two patrons said they'd shared a drink with Colin Ross and his brother Stanley in the room behind the bar and remained there until closing time. They could say with utmost confidence that Alma Turschke was not with them.
These men, along with the other saloon patrons, went to the police and vouched for Colin, unanimously stating that he was at the saloon between 2pm and closing time on December 30. They remembered him helping his brother behind the bar and chatting to customers. Ivy Matthews claimed it was the following day of December 31 that Colin led her out of the saloon and onto Little Collins Street, where he confessed to Alma's murder.
But other patrons, including Florence Rudkin, had been in the saloon at the time. At no point did they see Ivy Matthews there, nor did Colin leave the building at any time. If he disappeared from view, it was for barely minutes at a time. According to Olive Maddox, Colin had made suspicious comments to her about the Tershki case on January 5,
But multiple witnesses asserted that Colin was socialising at a home in West Melbourne that day, and Olive wasn't there. In the lead-up to and during the trial, each of the prosecution's witnesses were paid sustenance payments which rewarded witness cooperation. Post-conviction, they were each eligible to receive a share of the £1,000 reward.
Thomas Brennan hoped the jury would realise the danger of hinging a man's life or death on conflicting circumstantial evidence. Yet, even if the jury had dismissed the witnesses' claims, there was still the matter of the prosecution's smoking gun, Alma's hairs found on the blankets from Collins' saloon. This was concrete evidence that she'd been there, the kind of evidence that was impervious to deceit, pressure or influence.
Or was it? When the saloon closed down after failing to secure a new liquor license, most of its contents were taken to the Ross family home in Footscray, including the two blankets from the back room, one brown, one blue. The blankets were often laid out on the veranda for guests to sit on. At no point did Colin's mother Edie see any long red hairs on them.
If there were any, she believed they'd likely come from a red-headed female relative who had been staying over. When the blankets were taken into police custody, they weren't secured in any way to avoid contamination. After being freely transported in a police car, they were left on a detective's desk for an extended period of time until the analyst was ready to examine them.
The Ross trial marked the first conviction in Australasia using a scientific comparison of hairs, and it was not as reliable as it seemed. The analysis was done on appearance alone. The analyst who performed the comparison was a chemist by trade. He had no expert knowledge in hair analysis and had never previously analysed any hair samples. While the hairs were all red in colour, they varied in tone, length and texture.
Colin admitted to bringing women into the saloon's back room. Two red-haired women even testified to having combed their hair while in there, using a mirror which hung above the couch where the blankets were laid. Gladys, the friend Colin brought to his saloon on the night of December 30, also had red hair. Had the hairs been forcefully pulled from someone's scalp, one would expect they would still contain their roots. However, only one of the hairs still had its root attached.
In the state they were found in, the hairs aligned more with having fallen out naturally, not forcefully. The one root the analyst did have was essentially useless. He couldn't compare it to the sample of Alma's hair as it had been cut six inches from her scalp and therefore didn't have any roots attached either. The analyst concluded that all the hairs had come from Alma.
But without a form of testing that could prove it, his findings were nothing more than personal opinion. Colin had initially identified the brown blanket where 22 of the red hairs were found as having been inside his saloon. But he later realised that he'd confused it with another blanket. He now claimed that the one taken in as evidence had never been in his saloon.
When shown the exhibit, even former bartender Ivy Matthews said she'd never seen that blanket before. Semen stains found on the blue blanket were deemed evidence that Colin had raped Alma. However, when the blanket was kept at the Ross house, several of Colin's brothers had sprawled on it with their girlfriends. There was no way to test who the semen originated from.
The torn up blue fabric allegedly found on Footscray Road before Collins' trial wasn't a reliable piece of evidence either. It had been given weight because it supported Sydney Harding's statement that Collins shredded Alma's clothing and scattered the pieces at that location after her murder. The piece of fabric was never proven to have originated from Alma's clothing.
It was also surprisingly clean considering it had allegedly been on the side of a busy road for months. Furthermore, the police had never even bothered to search the area where it was recovered. Given the hoaxes that had arisen around Gunn Alley, it wasn't outrageous to consider that the fabric could have been planted there. In any case, if Sydney's statement was a lie, as the defence argued, the fabric held no relevance at all.
Even if Colin Ross had killed Amaterski, in each alleged version of the crime, the manner in which the death occurred was described as accidental, not deliberate. Ivy Matthews' original statement even contained the line "Colin did not intend to kill her", a crucial point she failed to repeat at trial. The defence felt that even if the confessions were true, Colin should have been charged with the lesser crime of manslaughter.
With all this in mind, Thomas Brennan couldn't believe Colin Ross was handed a guilty verdict for murder. Expressing an opinion that was ahead of its time, Brennan believed the jury were unconsciously swayed by the sensational and salacious press. Their articles inflamed public perception of Colin the moment he entered the investigation. In Brennan's opinion, his client came into the dock convicted. He said:
Never in the history of serious crimes in Victoria, or indeed in the British Empire, has a man been convicted on such a jumbled mass of contradictions. The only explanation is that the jury quite unconsciously formed opinions before they went into the box and, with their judgments clouded by their natural indignation, they were unable to view the matter dispassionately.
In the months following Colin's trial, several jurors spoke anonymously with the Herald newspaper. One said that during proceedings he'd locked eyes with Colin, who quickly averted his gaze. This one fleeting action led the juror to conclude that Colin was a guilty man. Another said there was a fear among the jury of speaking critically about the evidence presented against Colin in case, quote,
The hand of public scorn might point them out forever. He admitted that the jury had disregarded the claims by prosecution witness Francis Upton and there was scattered support for the others. The majority believed Ivy Matthews, but only half believed Sydney Harding. The guilty verdict would have been reached in minutes had it not been for two jurors expressing doubts that dragged the process out.
One of the dissenting jurors was an elderly man who broke down in tears when the verdict was read out in court. Another became emotional once he got home, saying: "I never want to serve on another jury charged with having to decide on a man's fate again." The defence had presented all the points justifying Colin's innocence during the trial and still lost. They couldn't pursue an appeal with the same information.
With Florence Rudkin coming forward post-conviction, Thomas Brennan had something new to work with. And Florence wasn't the only one. Prompted by the conviction, taxi driver Joseph Graham came forward to Colin Ross's legal team to detail his story about hearing a young girl screaming on Little Collins Street on the afternoon of Friday December 30 1921.
Although the police had been aware of this information and a second witness from Ballarat had corroborated it, this was the first time the defence had ever heard of it. While detectives had taken notes, they never followed up with either of the men, nor were further investigations made into the claims. The information was never given to the press to see if anyone else could elaborate on it.
Neither Joseph Graham nor the man from Ballarat were contacted to participate in the coronial inquest or murder trial relating to Alma Turski's death. To critics of the investigation, the men's exclusion highlighted the detective's attitude towards evidence that vindicated Colin. The level of disinterest from authorities about these witness accounts resulted in the name and contact details of the Ballarat man getting misplaced.
Thomas Brennan took chief responsibility for appealing Collins' verdict. When he made the application, he asked the Court of Criminal Appeal for time. After all, two new and extraordinary witnesses had come forward and he needed to investigate their claims thoroughly. The judges weren't willing to hold up proceedings to allow such investigations to take place. Brennan told them:
Surely, in a case of life and death, time should be given to prepare the appeal. His request was denied and the appeal was scheduled to take place one week later. Colin Ross appeared for the four-day hearing. He was worn as he hadn't been sleeping and was in a constant state of anxiety. As a man on death row, he was isolated from other prisoners and was only let out into the yard when it was empty. From there, he had a full view of the gallows.
Due to the lack of preparation time, Thomas Brennan wasn't able to schedule all the witnesses he'd intended to present at Collins' appeal. He had to work with what he had, hoping it would be enough. During the appeal process, a third new witness approached the Ross family. His name was George Crilly and he'd been motivated to come forward after reading about Collins' ordeal and the implication of police suppression and manipulation of evidence.
George claimed that on the afternoon of Friday December 30 1921, he was walking up Little Collins Street between 1.30 and 1.45pm when he noticed a girl matching Alma Turski's description. A man was following uncomfortably close behind her, so much so that George felt an urge to confront him. A short time later, George's attention was drawn to the facade of the Eastern Arcade,
The man and girl were standing there together, talking. George didn't know who the man was, but it wasn't Colin Ross. George had given this information to police during their investigations and was questioned several times over the matter, but nothing further was done. When Thomas Brennan informed the Court of Criminal Appeal of George Crilley's story, the Chief Justice replied,
There is nothing remarkable in somebody seen talking to a little girl. Brennan argued otherwise, and while the judges agreed to consider George's statement, they decided that they'd hear no further evidence and immediately retired to consider their verdict. When it was time to make their announcement, the Chief Justice stated that it was not part of the court's function to put aside the verdict of a jury unless a miscarriage of justice could be proven.
With that, he announced that Colin Ross' appeal was denied. Colin sat quietly while his mother and Florence Rudkin sobbed behind him. Colin was taken back to prison to await his death sentence. Thomas Brennan filed a new appeal, this time with the High Court. The proceedings commenced just weeks before Colin was due to be executed.
The High Court judges respected the jury's decision and rejected most of the grounds brought forth by the defence. One judge acknowledged that while Colin's two alleged confessions varied in facts, both ultimately had him admit to raping and killing Alma Turski. Quote: "If there is any inconsistency, it is an inconsistency in the prisoner's statement, not any inconsistency in the evidence of the witnesses to the alleged confessions."
The High Court, by a majority of 4 to 1, rejected the motion for a retrial. Colin cried out: "I am innocent, and if they hang me, they will hang an innocent man." Edie Ross sold the family home to fund her son's appeals. She fought desperately for his life, taking her campaign all the way to high-ranking religious leaders, politicians, and even the Attorney General.
She brought along a bundle of letters from sympathetic members of the public and a petition against Colin's conviction with 2,000 signatures of support. The public perception of Colin was shifting. As a result of their actions post-trial, the integrity of the prosecution's star witnesses were being questioned. Having essentially been identified as a grifter, Frank Upton adopted an alias and fled the state fearing retribution from Colin's supporters.
Sidney Harding and Joseph Dunstan were convicted of their joint housebreaking charge, though Sidney was granted early release and Joseph was pardoned. This added credence to the theory the men were offered deals to testify against Colin Ross. Olive Maddox wound up in prison for sex work and drunkenness. Ivy Matthews gave an interview to the Midnight Sun newspaper about the Turski case that was full of inaccuracies, with the publication concluding,
The question of to what extent Matthews can be relied on, either in speaking of herself or others, is a very open one indeed. While most Australians still believed in Colin's guilt, some felt capital punishment should be reserved for the most cold-blooded and calculated offenders. Letters were sent to the Governor seeking mercy for Colin, while others asked that he at least be given a proper opportunity to prove his innocence.
Edie Ross was nevertheless fighting an uphill battle when she told one politician, "My boy is as innocent as me." The politician responded, "I am perfectly satisfied that you are wasting your time and money." She managed to get the Attorney General to acknowledge there were weaknesses in the prosecution's case, but he refused to halt the execution.
On the morning of, Colin's family went to see him one last time. They struggled to find any words, but Colin was talkative and appeared accepting of his fate. He expressed his gratitude for their belief in him and encouraged them to live on without him. His mother reassured him that she'd continue to fight for him until her last breath.
She wasn't permitted to hug Colin, so the brief meeting ended with an unceremonious verbal farewell. More than 1,000 people encircled Melbourne Jail on the morning of Colin's execution. In his final moments, Colin sat quietly with a reverend and wrote a letter to his family. It read in part:
"Goodbye my darling mother and brothers. On this, the last day of my life, I want to tell you that I love you more than ever. Do not fear, for I know God will be with me. Try to forgive my enemies, let God deal with them. Do not fret too much for me. The day is coming when my innocence will be proved." When the cell door opened, Colin remained silent.
He handed the Reverend the Bible he'd possessed during his incarceration, then placed his hand on the Reverend's shoulders in a way described as "more eloquent than words." Colin was then led to the gallows. An experimental four-strand rope was used for the occasion, though never again, as it ended up taking upwards of 20 minutes for Colin Ross to die. Colin's prison Bible was passed on to his mother,
The inside was full of annotations and alterations he'd made to the text to make it relevant to his current circumstances. They depicted a man fighting desperately against a world determined to condemn him, with lines like "False witnesses rose up against me" "They laid to my charge things that I knew not" "Time will tell" and "The police" "Wickedness is in the midst thereof"
"Deceit and guile depart not from her streets." – Melbourne On one page, Colin underlined the words "full of bribes" and wrote next to it: "This is our police force, which our people think so much of." With the execution of Colin Ross, the Gun Alley Murder as it came to be known faded from headlines until eventually people stopped talking about it altogether.
Edie Ross maintained her promise to fight for her son's name. She wrote a letter to the people of Australia that urged, "'I view with horror the awful crime for which my son was wrongly executed. I quite understand the indignation and wrath that must sway the judgment of the public at the committal of the shocking deed.'
But, as his mother, I protest with all my soul that my boy should be made the innocent victim of that indignation and wrath. I have gone from place to place, from one to another, pleading for my boy's life, pleading for justice and mercy, only to be turned away without hope.
As my dear son Colin has suffered all that the law can do to him, I now make a mother's appeal to the public of Australia to help me clear my son's name from the terrible stigma that has been placed upon it. Melbourne, however, was prepared to move on, and it did. Case File will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors.
Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. 71 years later, in 1993, a retrospective exhibition on Australian artist Charles Blackman was held at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Titled Schoolgirls and Angels, it featured a series of paintings and drawings Blackman produced in the 1950s depicting bleak, deserted cityscapes reminiscent of Melbourne in the 1920s. A girl wearing a school uniform and a straw hat wandered among the streets as if lost, her eyes wide in fear. 37-year-old Kevin Morgan was a trainee librarian at the National Gallery. Every time he walked to his workspace, he passed Blackman's art.
Kevin didn't know what inspired the menacing images, but they intrigued him. He found himself asking, "Who was this mysterious child?" He later explained, quote: "There was something about her, haunting and haunted, that seemed to beg the heart. This child had a sense of death around her." Seeking an explanation, Kevin read a catalogue about Charles Blackman that contained quotes from an interview he'd given many years earlier.
Blackman discussed his inspiration for the artwork, saying: "A schoolgirl was once murdered in the lane near the old Eastern Market and it left a direct and anguished effect on me." Kevin Morgan had never heard of Alma Tershki, but Blackman's confronting art drove him to learn more about her case. By that point, the families of the victim and the convicted and all the witnesses and investigators involved in the original case had passed away.
Key locations like Gun Alley and the Eastern Arcade no longer existed. Still, Kevin dug up as much information as he could examining newspaper archives and the writings of defense attorney Thomas Brennan. The more Kevin studied the case, the more he came to realize it featured two innocent victims. The obvious one was Alma Tershki, the other was Colin Ross.
Although Colin had died 34 years before Kevin was born, Kevin could feel Colin's presence in everything he read. It felt as though he was crying out for his name to be cleared. Kevin left his job to devote the next seven years of his life to conducting a deep dive into the Tershki case. He reached out to the living relatives of those involved and obtained Colin's old prison bible which had been stored in a shed.
Upon taking in all the messages Colin had scrawled in it, Kevin was deeply affected. He accessed the original court documents, absorbing the mess of contradictions and anomalies in the prosecution witness testimony. He read about the witnesses who had gone ignored, but whose recollections might have rescued Colin from the gallows. But the biggest revelation was yet to come.
As Kevin examined the archives of the Office of Public Prosecutions library, he made a discovery. Upon looking inside an old forgotten box, he came across an envelope marked with the words "On His Majesty's Service". Inside were several white cards with a small amount of hair stuck to them. One card was labelled as Alma Tershki's hair, the other held the hairs lifted from Colin Ross's brown blanket.
In 1922, these hairs played a major role in securing Colin's conviction. Even after so many years, they were as vibrant a red hue as ever. Kevin had been told that all the physical evidence pertaining to the case had been destroyed, so this was a major find. With the advancement of forensic technology, Kevin sought to have the hair re-examined. A long bureaucratic and legal battle followed.
It took three years, but Kevin was finally permitted to carry out the tests. In 1998, the results were in. An analyst from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine concluded that the hairs were easily differentiated at the microscopic level. There were very clear differences in colour, pigmentation and other features. They had not originated from the same scalp as had been claimed during Colin Ross's murder trial.
The samples were retested by the Federal Police Investigation Unit, who concluded, "The hairs from the brown blanket could not have come from Alma Turski." In 2005, Kevin Morgan released a book on his findings titled "Gun Alley: Murder, Lies and Failure of Justice." That year, assisted by legal experts, he prepared a petition to the Victorian Government asking for the verdict in Alma Turski's murder to be annulled.
Such requests were typically made by the convicted person themselves, but this was the first time in Australian legal history that the request was made posthumously. Kevin had been given permission to go ahead by both Colin and Dauma's living relatives, who all signed the petition. The Attorney General considered the petition for a year before referring the matter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Fourteen months later, after the court's most senior judges had poured through all the new and old evidence of the case, a report was completed. They concluded that if the 1922 jury were given access to the recent hair test results, Colin Ross would have been found not guilty. The trial was formally ruled a miscarriage of justice.
Referring to the case as a travesty, the Attorney General presented a framed letter of pardon for Colin Ross that was handed to members of his and the Turschke families. One of Colin's nieces felt a great sense of relief, saying: "I had lived with this fear and doubt for most of my life, the more so as I began to have children, that perhaps I carried the genes of a murderer. That shadow has gone."
Alma's relatives felt the pardon wasn't enough. A second cousin of hers said, "A pardon means I am forgiving you for something you have done. Shouldn't it rather be an exoneration, which means I accept you didn't do this in the first place?" Nevertheless, they were grateful for the impact the pardon would have on the country's collective memory of Alma. One of Alma's nieces said,
The pardon has also helped restore the reputation of Alma because it shows that she didn't enter the wine bar as was said in the trial. She was a good girl. Colin's remains were ordered to be removed from the unmarked prison grave they were resting in so he could be given a proper burial. Melbourne jail had long since been decommissioned and the remains of deceased prisoners buried there were moved around and reburied at different sites.
Colin's remains were in a coffin shared by three other men and it took years to track down where exactly they had been placed and which remains among them belonged to Colin. In October 2010, Colin's relatives held a funeral service on his behalf on the site where he'd been executed. The relatives of Alma Turski attended in a show of solidarity. One of Colin's relatives stated…
"This morning we leave behind us the cold stones of the Melbourne jail. Colin is at last set free. He is with his family once again. Colin's remains were cremated and interred beside those of his mother in rural Victoria." Kevin Morgan, whose actions led to Colin Ross's vindication, told the Age newspaper: "A big stain on the legal system has finally been expunged and a shadow on two Australian families has also been lifted.
That justice has finally been done for the Ross and Turschke families after 86 years is a tremendous outcome. Reflecting on the entire experience for his book, Kevin said: "17 years earlier, as I walked through the picture gallery pondering the identity of Charles Blackman's schoolgirl, I could not have guessed what ordinary people could do, let alone achieve, in the face of a perceived injustice.
With Colin Ross pardoned, the question remained: who killed Alma Tershki? Based on the known facts of the case, Kevin Morgan was surprised Colin Ross was ever considered a suspect. He had no history of sexual-based offending and in Kevin's words, he was "an impulsive bungling criminal acting without forethought, as exemplified by him proposing at gunpoint and the planned robbery that went awry."
He could be stupid, to put it frankly. In contrast, Kevin concluded Alma's killer was "someone possessed of a clear mind, capable of thinking ahead, and aware of the sorts of clues that might disclose his identity." This person was not stupid or careless, may indeed have been educated, and appears to have known about techniques of crime detection as they were then applied, and the state of forensic medicine in 1922.
Other known child killers were tenuously linked to Alma, but none were considered genuine suspects. While researching his book, Kevin Morgan collated all the information provided by Alma's younger sister Viola, who was 10 years old in 1921. In doing so, Kevin discovered a chilling secret. After Alma's murder, Viola was plagued by nightmares of being pursued by a male figure through dark places.
Sometimes she'd have visions of the man poking his head through her bedroom window. During one nightmare, he entered Viola's room and told her, "I came home at one o'clock." Viola believed the man in her nightmares was George Murphy, the husband of one of her older cousins. She sensed George was a pedophile and that he'd wanted to sexually assault her from a young age.
It all started when she was around 6 or 7 years old and he rubbed her legs in an inappropriate manner. From then onwards, Viola felt George was trying to groom her. She took to hiding in a wardrobe whenever he visited and asked other family members to keep close to her whenever he was around. On one occasion, he chased her out onto the street and continued to pursue her until she reached safety.
When Viola was 16, George asked her to marry him. She refused. Viola didn't tell anyone about George's actions at the time as she felt no one would believe her. Her silence was fueled by the era's conservative culture, as the topic of sex, even non-consensual sex, was never openly discussed.
In an interview in 1997, Viola revealed that she wasn't questioned by anybody, including the police, about her sister's murder. Therefore, she never implicated George Murphy in the crime, saying, Kevin Morgan discovered that in December 1921, George Murphy was working as a draftsman for the Office of the Register General and Register of Titles.
His office was on Queen Street in Melbourne's CBD, which intersected all the main thoroughfares relevant to the Terschke case, including Bourke, Little Collins and Collins Streets. Kevin theorised that after unsuccessfully grooming Viola, George Murphy set his sights on Alma. Of the two sisters, Alma was the more trusting and obedient, a befitting target for a child predator.
If Alma had endured any form of sexual abuse, it was reasonable to assume she wouldn't have spoken out about it. The fact that it involved a family member would have made it even more unmentionable. Maybe her uncle-in-law had scared her silent. A month before her murder, Alma told her friends that a spiritualist had warned that she'd die soon.
Although this story was proven false, Kevin Morgan wondered whether Alma was exposing a very real fear she had within a fictitious narrative. George Murphy could have threatened to kill Alma if she exposed his crimes. When George learnt Alma was leaving Melbourne to live with her father in regional Victoria, he might have feared losing control of her. Outside of his reach, she could be compelled to expose him.
As Kevin theorised, George might have felt like he had to silence her once and for all. By the time Kevin Morgan began looking into George Murphy as a suspect in the Tershke case, the records of his former employer were no longer available. Therefore, George's whereabouts that day couldn't be proven. When Alma had arrived at the butcher shop on the day of her disappearance, she wasn't in a state of distress.
Therefore, Kevin Morgan believed that her ordeal began shortly after she left the shop. Witnesses had reported seeing a man following Alma along Little Collins Street before confronting her outside the Eastern Arcade. Alma wasn't inclined to speak to strangers, so it was possible that she knew the man. Alma had been instructed to leave the parcel of meat at her aunt's flat, knowing that the flat itself would be empty.
In a move that was completely out of character for a girl who wrote a school essay titled "Judy First", Alma instead slowly and nervously wandered around the neighboring streets, avoiding her intended destination. According to Kevin Morgan, quote: "The meeting altered Alma's course. She diverged from her route to her aunt's flat ten minutes away because it was no longer a sanctuary.
Kevin considered whether Alma had told the man where she was headed and then stalled for time out of fear that he would go there and wait for her. Perhaps she was seeking safety by remaining in a public, populated area. She wandered into the eastern arcade only to realise it wasn't a suitable space for lone children, so she headed back outside. Shortly after this, the screams of a distressed young girl were heard echoing up Little Collins Street.
When speaking to the press in January 1922, investigators leading the Turski case assured the public: "No piece of information was disregarded and every supposed clue was subjected to the closest scrutiny." At that time, the case's lead detective, Fred Pigott, was considered a real-life Sherlock Holmes.
A hard-nosed detective with an eye for detail, Piggott was a celebrity due to his work on many high-profile homicide cases. He was widely regarded as one of the best detectives of his era. His work on the Tershki case not only earned him accolades and respect, but credited him as helping bring forensic science into Australian courtrooms. Detective Piggott had passed away by the time Colin Ross was pardoned.
During his illustrious career, he was involved in a case involving a husband accused of fatally shooting his wife. In a groundbreaking move, Pigott carried out what was then the first example of blood spatter interpretation in a Victorian criminal case. He determined that the killing was in fact a suicide, and his work saved the accused from being executed.
What exactly went wrong for Piggott in the Turschke case will never be fully understood. He was the type of detective to put in the work to ensure justice was correctly served, but had failed spectacularly in that instance. It's believed that Piggott put too much faith in the analysis of the hair evidence, even though it wasn't reliable.
Still, this didn't answer why so many significant pieces of evidence that exonerated Colin Ross went wilfully ignored. In 1961, Detective Pigott gave an interview that touched on the Turschke case, during which he stated: "The public were clamoring for police action and the politicians, of course, were harassing us. We survived the uproar long enough to plump for the theory that Ross ravished and strangled Alma in the saloon.
But we were well aware that our evidence was only circumstantial." He also said: "While I suspected Ross, we desired to build up the chain of evidence that was being forged against him." In his book on the case, Kevin Morgan added his own thoughts to this assertion, writing: "Thus, when a piece of evidence could not be forged into a link, it seems it was simply discarded."
Throughout his time as Colin's attorney, Thomas Brennan had received many letters. Some warned him against helping Colin, while others expressed their support of the condemned man. There were even multiple alleged confessions from someone claiming to be Al Maturshki's real killer. Brennan easily recognised the confessions as hoaxes. Some had been penned by Colin's supporters in the hopes they could somehow prevent his execution.
But on Sunday April 23 1922, the eve before Colin Ross was set to be executed, an anonymous letter arrived at Brennan's office that he felt was genuine. The author left behind no identifying information, save for a postmark indicating the letter had been sent from a country town in Victoria. As reproduced in Brennan's book on the case titled "The Gun Alley Tragedy", the letter read:
to Colin Ross at Melbourne Jail: "You have been condemned for a crime which you never committed and are to suffer for another's fault. Since your conviction you have, no doubt, wondered what manner of man the real murderer is and who could not only encompass the girl's death but allow you to suffer in his stead."
My dear Ross, if it is any satisfaction for you to know it, believe me that you will die but once, but he will continue to die for the rest of his life. Honoured and fawned upon by those who know him, the smile upon his lips but hides the canker eating into his soul. Day and night his life is a hell without the hope of reprieve. Gladly would he take your place on Monday next if he had himself alone to consider."
His reason, then briefly stated, is this: "A devoted and loving mother is ill. A shock would be fatal. Himself he will sacrifice when his mother passes away. He will do it by his own hand. He will board the ferry across the Styx with a lie on his lips, with the only hope that religion is a myth and death annihilation. It is too painful for him to go into the details of the crime,
It is simply a Jekyll and Hyde existence. By a freak of nature, he was not made as other men. This girl was not the first. With a procuress, all things are possible. In this case, there was no intention of murder. The victim unexpectedly collapsed.
May it be some satisfaction to yourself, your devoted mother, and the members of your family to know that at least one of the legions of the damned, who is the cause of your death, is suffering the pangs of hell. He may not ask your forgiveness or sympathy, but he asks for your understanding.