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Hollow Saddle: The Unsolved Murder of Mick, Polly, and Nora Murphy, The Gatton Tragedy, Australia's Christmas Night Massacre
Paperback
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Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 28 2025
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.17
Height: 0.82 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Three siblings. One riderless horse. A paddock that still won't speak. On the morning of December 27, 1898, the bodies of Mick, Nora, and Ellen Murphy were found in a triangular arrangement in Moran's Paddock near Gatton, Queensland. What should have been a swift, careful investigation became a cautionary tale: a compromised crime scene, a cursory first autopsy, and a belated second post-mortem that uncovered a bullet wound in Mick's skull. This is the definitive narrative of Australia's Christmas Night Massacre-and the silence that followed.
What you'll read:
A cinematic reconstruction of the siblings' last ride; a step-by-step forensic walkthrough of what the grass revealed; the investigative failures that erased footprints as surely as the crowds that trampled them; and the suspects who haunted the margins-William McNeill, the O'Brien brothers, and the drifter known as Theo Farmer-woven against the parallel of young Alfred Hill's murder weeks later.
Inside the book: case file and chronology, character map, forensic tracker, interview excerpts, suspect overviews, red-herring map, legal documents, alternative theories, and a Reader's Detective Index to guide your own deductions. This book contains no images-only cinematic narrative written in the style of a detective-investigator.
The reader's promise: You'll gain a clear timeline, forensic insight into the blows and bindings, the significance of the left-handed attacker hypothesis, and the legal and social forces that kept the truth from court. You won't find a neat verdict-but you will find clarity.
This Book Is For Readers Who...
- trace unsolved murders and cold case timelines step by step
- crave historical true crime with modern investigative rigor
- follow forensic analysis over rumor
- want Australian true crime grounded in primary sources
- compare suspects, alibis, and motive without sensationalism
Perfect For Fans Of... Michelle McNamara, Helen Garner, Gregg Olsen, and Erik Larson-writers who fuse human stakes with investigative depth.
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