In a series of punitive expeditions led by Northern Territory Police constable William George Murray, people of the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye groups were killed.

Official records at the time state that at least 31 people were killed, however analysis of existing documentation and Aboriginal oral histories reveal that the fatalities were likely to have been as high as 200.

Parched conditions, though later discounted by authorities as a precipitating factor, were to play a key role in events at Coniston.

[3] It was generally believed in the white community that the interests of traditional Aboriginal land owners and those of cattle stations could not be reconciled.

Stafford warned him that he and the woman[8] he cohabited with, Alice, had been threatened by "Myalls" (an offensive term denoting traditional living Aboriginal people) and that venturing any further than 22 km (14 mi) west would be unsafe.

[7] A third account is more detailed, stating that Japanunga became enraged when he found his wife in bed with Brooks and attacked him, severing an artery in his throat with his boomerang.

On 11 August, the Government Resident John C. Cawood sent Constable William George Murray, the officer in charge at Barrow Creek who also held the post of Chief Protector of Aborigines,[f] to Coniston to investigate the complaints of cattle spearing.

Returning to Coniston, Murray questioned Dodger and Skipper who described the circumstances of the murder and named Bullfrog, Padirrka and Marungali as the killers.

The next morning the posse, with Padygar and Woolingar following on foot in chains, set out for the Lander River where they found a camp of 23 Warlpiri at Ngundaru.

Returning to Coniston, Murray left Padygar, Woolingar and one of the three boys, 11-year-old Lolorrbra (known as Lala, who would become a chief witness at the enquiry), whose crushed feet had become infected, in Stafford's custody before heading north to continue the search.

By Murray's account, he met four separate groups of Warlpiri, and in each case was obliged to shoot in self-defence – a total of 17 casualties.

[11] On 24 August, Murray captured an Aboriginal person named Arkirkra and returned to Coniston, where he collected Padygar (Woolingar had died that night still chained to the tree) and then marched the two 240 mi (390 km) to Alice Springs.

On 16 September, Henry Tilmouth of Napperby station shot and killed an Aboriginal person he was chasing away from the homestead; this incident was included in the later enquiry.

During the night they surrounded his camp and at dawn 15 men armed with boomerangs and yam sticks rushed Morton.

Morton returned to his main camp and was taken to the Ti Tree Well mission where a nurse removed 17 splinters from his head and treated him for a serious skull fracture.

According to the Warlpiri, this patrol encountered Aboriginal people at Dingo Hole where they killed four men and 11 women and children.

The Warlpiri also recount how the patrol charged a corroboree at Tippinba, rounding up a large number of Aboriginal people like cattle before cutting out the women and children and shooting all the men.

The report was only several lines long; he wrote: "....incidents occurred on an expedition with William John Morton, unfortunately drastic action had to be taken and resulted in a number of male natives being shot."

Murray took the stand next, his evidence becoming so involved in justifying his own actions in killing suspects that Justice Mallam reminded him that he himself was not on trial and to avoid facts not relevant to the guilt of the accused.

—The Northern Territory Times, 9 November 1928[11] In the courtroom to hear this and other evidence of massacre was Athol McGregor, a Central Australian missionary.

He passed on his concern to church leaders, and eventually to William Morley, outspoken and influential advocate of the Association for the Protection of Native Races, who did the most to secure a judicial enquiry.

[11][21] The Board of Inquiry was presided over by police magistrate A. H. O'Kelly and was deeply compromised from the start – its three members being hand-picked to maximise damage control, J. C. Cawood, Government Resident of Central Australia, and Murray's immediate superior, being one of them.

The day after this report was published, a settler replied in the letters to the editor that the drought made the life of one ewe worth more to Australia than "all the blacks that were ever here".

[23] Cawood expressed his satisfaction with the outcome in his annual report for 1929, writing: "The evidence of all the witnesses was conclusive … the Board found that the shooting was justified, and that the natives killed were all members of the Walmulla [sic] tribe from Western Australia, who were on a marauding expedition, with the avowed object of wiping out the white settlers…"[24] Following his appointment, O'Kelly had stated his intention that the inquiry would not be a whitewash and it is speculated[by whom?]

[27] The strong oral history established after the massacre is recorded in paintings by some Indigenous artists and the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Kaytetye refer to the period as The Killing Times.

Similarly, other massacres that have occurred in the Ord River region have been depicted by Warmun artists such as Rover Thomas.

Member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, Jack Ah Kit in an adjournment debate on 9 October 2003 stated:[28] It must be remembered that the late 1920s was a time of major drought and therefore, in the context of what was still very much the frontier of black/white relations in Australia, the conflict over resources was intense.

What is often misunderstood is that the Coniston Massacre was no single event, but a series of punitive raids that occurred over a number of weeks as police parties killed indiscriminately.

Even Keith Windschuttle, one of the great deniers of frontier violence, acknowledges the savagery and disproportionate nature of the Coniston reprisals.

Even he, albeit based only on the unsubstantiated writings of a journalist, agrees that many more died than the official record will admit.The seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre was commemorated on 24 September 2003 near Yuendumu organised by the Central Land Council.