Gatton murders
Michael had returned home for the Christmas holidays and on 26 December 1898 (Boxing Day) had taken his sister Ellen to the Mount Sylvia Races in nearby Caffey.
[3] Michael's brother Daniel, an officer at Brisbane police headquarters, had received a telegram from a family friend on 27 December informing him of the murders.
Returning to headquarters, he discovered that no action was being taken by detectives in the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), including Inspector Frederic Urquhart, due to rumours circulating that the murders were a hoax.
[5] A Royal Commission later found this sequence of events 'incomprehensible', indicative of 'the existence of a rotten system' of policing and 'a culpable indifference on the part of the Inspector [Urquhart] to his duty to the public.
However, all other witnesses stated that Michael's hands were not tied, but that a breeching strap lay nearby, and that an empty purse was lying a short distance from the body.
When Michael's body was removed from the murder scene at about 1:30pm, he was now found to have the breeching strap between his untied hands, with the empty purse held in one.
"[8] From interviews with people who had seen the bodies, the Queensland Police Service (QPS) determined that Michael may have been shot in the head, but this was not found by Von Lossberg despite claims that he had been asked to look for a bullet.
Although decomposition was advanced, it was now found that Michael had indeed been shot in the right side of his head and then subsequently struck on the same spot with a blunt instrument, so that the later wound partially obscured the bullet hole.
Von Lossberg testified that he had told Galbraith that he had not performed an autopsy at all because he was suffering from blood poisoning and advised that the bodies not be buried.
Clerk George Baines testified that he was present at this conversation and that Von Lossberg had not mentioned not completing the autopsies, his blood poisoning or the request for Galbraith not to bury the bodies.
Both men rode to the murder scene, where they remained for thirty minutes before Arrell returned to Gatton to send a telegram to the Brisbane Commissioner of Police.
The failure of the QPS to solve the crime led to accusations of cover-ups and rumours of incest within the Murphy family; these claims were also subsequently never resolved.
Moreover, a constable gave evidence at the Royal Commission that he suspected Day to have been involved in the killing of Alfred Stephen Hill by Edward Litton Carus-Wilson in nearby Oxley just a few weeks prior to the Gatton murders, and that the same revolver had been used in both crimes.
[7] Among its findings, the Commission determined that the QPS suffered from a 'lack of cohesion and efficient organisation to enable them to cope with serious crimes in such a manner as the people of the colony are entitled to expect.'
