Fred Ward helped drive some four dozen of the stolen horses from the Lambs Valley property of his brother William to Windsor where they were sold at auction.

[5] Released on tickets of leave after serving four years, Ward and his nephews settled in the Mudgee district where John Garbutt met and married a wealthy widow, Elizabeth Blackman, owner of Cooyal inn and station.

In breach of ticket-of-leave regulations, Ward left the Mudgee district to take Mary Ann back to her father's farm at Monkerai near Dungog for the baby's delivery.

Over the following six-and-a-half years, Ward robbed mailmen, travellers, inns, stores and stations across much of northern New South Wales - from the Hunter Valley north to Queensland and from Tamworth nearly as far west as Bourke.

He was accompanied by three other men, early in 1865, when he went on a crime spree in the north-western plains, but the gang disbanded after young John Thompson was shot and captured at Millie, near Moree.

[14] After Monckton left him, Ward remained largely in seclusion, surfacing only a handful of times in the next eighteen months to commit robberies.

On 25 May 1870, after allegedly robbing travellers near the Big Rock, Ward was shot and killed by Constable Alexander Binney Walker at Kentucky Creek near Uralla.

[18] Ward's body was identified at a magisterial inquiry the next day by the gunshot wound on the back of his left knee, as well as by his height, hair and eye colouring, and moles and warts noted in the Police Gazette Reward Notice in the aftermath of his escape from Cockatoo Island.

[22] In March 2010, the NSW Legislative Council went so far as to demand the release of archival records relating to Ward's death, a motion introduced by Nationals upper house whip Rick Colless.

[23][22] These alternative theories surrounding Ward's death, however, are believed to lack credibility, with the 2010 parliamentary standing order described as frivolous by some historians.

[25][26] The legend of Thunderbolt is exhibited at McCrossin's Mill Museum in Uralla and includes the series of nine paintings by Phillip Pomroy of the events that led to Fred Ward's death.