SYDNEY – The headless remains of Australia’s most infamous criminal, Ned Kelly, have been identified, officials said Thursday, ending a decades-long mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the folk hero’s body.
Kelly, who led a gang of bank robbers in Australia’s southern Victoria state in the 19th century, was hanged in 1880. His final resting place was unknown, though it was long suspected his body lay alongside 33 other executed inmates in a mass grave at a prison.
Officials pinpointed the location of the grave site in 2008 and later exhumed the bodies for analysis. A DNA sample from one of Kelly’s descendants confirmed that one of the skeletons — which was missing most of its skull — was that of the notorious Ned, said Victoria Attorney General Robert Clark.
“To think a group of scientists could identify the body of a man who was executed more than 130 years ago, moved and buried
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