Jeffrey and three other convicts absconded from custody in Launceston in December 1825 and were subsequently responsible for five murders characterised by extreme violence, including the killing of a five-month-old infant.

Jeffrey and six others subsequently absconded from a convict work-gang at Limeburners Creek near the Karuah River north of Newcastle and made their way south to the Sydney region.

After his companions gave themselves up, Jeffrey joined with a large group of escaped convicts in The Cowpastures district but was betrayed, apprehended, and taken to Parramatta Gaol where he was put in irons.

[8] Jeffrey was transported to Van Diemen's Land aboard the brig Hawies, arriving on 1 January 1822 at Port Dalrymple at the mouth of the Tamar River.

Jeffrey was later transferred to the George Town Gaol and sentenced to twelve months in the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station for "threats to stab Chief Constable Lawson".

[18] On the night of Sunday 11 December 1825, Jeffrey absconded from lawful custody into the bush in company with three other convicts: John Perry, James Hopkins, and Edward Russell.

They drew back, intending to check the rear of the building, but suddenly a pistol shot rang out and the four convicts decided to run, jumping the lumberyard fence and escaping to "the long black hills".

[21] Each of Jeffrey's three companions had also been sentenced to transportation for life: In need of supplies, the four absconders stopped at the hut of a man named Smith at The Springs, 8 miles (13 km) south of Launceston.

[29] Matthew Brady and his gang of bushrangers were at the time notorious in Van Diemen's Land, having been at large and active throughout the island for eighteen months after escaping from the penal station at Macquarie Harbour in a whaleboat.

[37] On the morning of 31 December 1825, Jeffrey, Perry, and Russell approached two men splitting wood near the hut of a settler named George Barnard that was situated on the Tamar River (in the vicinity of the modern Launceston suburb of Rocherlea).

Tibbs, his wife Elizabeth, their five-month-old son John, and one of Barnard's men (named Walker) were taken back into the bush by one of the bushrangers, while Jeffrey and his other companion selected articles from the house for plunder.

The Colonial Times reported that when Jeffrey returned, Elizabeth Tibbs frantically asked after her child and the bushranger told her "he had dashed its brains out, and that the little innocent had smiled upon him in the bloody act".

The following morning, 11 January 1836, they heard the cooee calls again and Bruce was sent to fetch the man, "no doubt with grim warnings not to alert the stranger about who was waiting for him".

When he joined them, the man was found to be Constable Magnus Bakie (or Baker) of George Town, who had been part of a search party hunting for the escapees and had become separated from his group.

However, the landscape they were now travelling through between Launceston and George Town was relatively unsettled, and the few farms in the district were likely bases for the search parties hunting them, forcing them to keep to the wild bush and scrub country to evade their pursuers.

[50] A newspaper report after Jeffrey's capture, claiming to be based on his verbal confession, included a differing version of the events preceding Russell's murder.

[36][52] The following day, when Hopkins was being escorted through the streets of Launceston, Mrs. Feutril, mother of Elizabeth Tibbs and grandmother of the murdered infant, mistook one of the constables guarding the prisoner for Jeffrey, "and rushing from her house in a paroxysm of rage, stabbed him with a fork".

[36] On the morning of Sunday 22 January 1826, three separate parties in search of Jeffrey and his companions had met up at "Mr. Davies's hut" on the bank of the South Esk River near Evandale.

As the other men emerged from the hut, he asked if "any quarter" would be given; he was answered in the affirmative by Mr. Wedge's man (a convict named William Parsons), who had him covered with his firearm.

[56] While Jeffrey was incarcerated in the Launceston Gaol awaiting transfer to Hobart for trial, it was reported that he was "writing the History of his own Life, in which he describes crimes of as deep a dye, perpetrated by him in England and Scotland, as even those committed by him in this Island".

[58] Jeffrey and Perry, along with Brady and his captured gang-members, were transported from Launceston to Hobart aboard the Government brig Prince Leopold, arriving at their destination on 27 March 1826.

[59] At Hobart, a large crowd had gathered to watch as the manacled prisoners were disembarked and marched to the gaol on the corner of Macquarie and Murray streets, where they were all placed in a cell together.

[60][61] In the early hours of 5 April, the gaoler, John Bisbee, whose bedroom adjoined the cell where Jeffrey and the others were confined, heard "a sort of scratching, which excited his suspicion".

[70][71] An important factor in granting the reprieve was probably the fact that Hopkins had separated from his fellow absconders before the murders and other heinous crimes had begun to be committed by his three companions.

It was Russell who had set in motion the series of killings by murdering Sutherland's unnamed employee on Christmas Day and, a week later, mortally wounding Isaac Beechy.

Despite his crimes, very little opprobrium has been attached to Russell, probably because he himself ended up as a victim, shot in the forehead by Perry, his body butchered and his flesh consumed to sustain his former companions.

[60] After Jeffrey was sentenced to death there was a distinct change in tone towards the murderer, with contemporary press reports more likely to refer to indications of his repentance, and alluding to him as one of the group of "unhappy men" that were to be executed.

In his retelling of the raid on Tibbs' farm, Bonwick wrote that the woman's husband was "struck senseless" by Jeffrey and "the trembling wife", holding her baby, was made to follow him.

As she was walking too slow for his liking, "the demon turned round with awful curses, snatched the baby from her breast, and dashed its brains out against a tree"; he then seized "the frantic mother" and "drove her onward at the point of the knife to his own forest den".

One example is a feature article entitled 'Cannibals Who Were "Christians": Devils in Human Guise Preyed on Friends' by J. H. M. Abbott, published in the Sydney Truth newspaper in January 1935.