Strange words

Sorry but this is NOT Ned Kelly....or is it?

‘Mind you die like a Kelly, son’ were Ellen Kellys last words to Ned. They are described by Ian Jones in ‘A Short Life’ (p392 in the 2008 edition, Jane) as ‘strange words from a mother such as Ellen to a son such as Ned’.  So what was strange about them, and what did she really mean?

According to “Ned Kelly Volume 1” available from Amazon as an e-book,  Ellen was really saying  ‘Die AS IF YOU WERE a Kelly’ – because she knew that the man about to be hanged wasn’t her son, he wasn’t a Kelly at all but  a convicted Swedish murderer from NSW, Alfred Engstrom.  He was going to “Die like a Kelly” to maintain the Police secret that Ned had already left the district and was living as Mr J Thompson in Adelaide!

 

Note the Typo. Big ears? 

This work has a catchy alternatve title “Kelly-Gate: Unmasking the Ned Kelly Conspiracy” and seems to have arisen out of an observation made by the author, when comparing  the size of Neds ears in a photo taken as a young man and in the photo taken the day before he was hanged at Melbourne Gaol. He writes “The man we hanged was not Ned Kelly – he had small ears….while a younger Ned had large ears”

I immediately looked at those photos of Ned and sure enough in the prison photo the ears DID seem smaller. Talk about things being hidden in plain sight - there couldn’t possibly be any other explanation for this apparent discrepancy between two photos from the 1800’s. No doubt about it – different sized ears in old photos can only mean one thing : these were two completely different and unrelated men! And, obviously if that’s the case then everything else we thought we knew about the Kelly Outbreak is all completely wrong. All of it. The whole  lot! 

Big ears?

Small ears?

The author of this myth-shattering revelation is  Melboune ‘medicare accredited’, bulk billing Clinical Psychologist, Dr Michael King PhD, PhD (yes twice!) M.App.Sci, M.Ed. He would appear to regard himself as in some way qualified to analyse photographic evidences because he advertises himself as being available for ‘legal and forensic reports’ . He says he completed this book in 1997 but an unnamed Publisher “took actual money for his efforts and merely messed around with it until the writer gave up hope. Then came Amazon Kindle and a couple of friends said “put it out there”

Volume 2, still to be published “discusses in forensic detail every known fact and fiction relating to the Kelly story, showing how most of the Glenrowan myth just could not be true”. Well yes, of course! In Volume 3, also still to be published, there is ‘an extensive personality assessment of the man behind the mask’

King writes that he made a study of Ned Kellys personality mainly using  ‘Ned and the others’ a book by Gary Dean and Dagmar Balcarek, and says he ‘emerged as a sociopath’. According to King, Ned was sick of running, he wanted the hunt to end, and in desperation agreed to a diabolical plan devised by Superintendent Hare : Ned would bring the Outbreak to an end by betraying the gang in return for his freedom. Aaron would be the first to die but  Hare insisted no harm was to be done to the Policemen in his hut. A train would be sent from Melbourne to bring a convicted murderer from NSW, Alfred Engstrom, to replace Ned using the Police-made armour as a disguise.  Engstrom, impersonating Ned, would be ‘captured’, and the rest of the gang killed. Later, Engstrom as Ned would be hanged and the Kelly gang consigned to history.  And isn’t that exactly what happened? Remember when Ned left the Inn during the siege and for several hours his whereabouts were unknown? Did he not re-emerge in armour from behind Police lines early in the morning? By then, the substitute had been made – it was Engstrom - and Ned was already galloping to Echuca, a Paddle-steamer down the Murray to Wentworth, and freedom.

Unfortunately for the author of this convoluted explanation for what happened at Glenrowan, it is a spectacular failure of the test of Occams razor, and for that reason alone can be dismissed. It fails a whole lot of tests, but the one that’s fatal to this mad conspiracy theory is the one provided by Science: when the bones of the ‘fake’ Ned were examined, they contained scientific proof  in the form of DNA evidence that whoever it was that was hanged, it wasn’t a Swede but a direct descendant of Ellen Kelly. Not a fake at all. Who else but Ned? Explain that Mr King!- actually no, don’t bother - It will just be another chapter of insane conspiracy, and I’m getting tired of them.But I have to say, I just love science - the way it cuts through bullshit is spectacular!

The only reason anyone ought to read this mad nonsense is if they’re interested in seeing a conspiracy theorist at work.