Arrest
In February 1975 nine-year-old Ricky John Smith (also known as Ricky Kube) was abducted and O'Neill was one of many who helped in the search for the missing boy. Over the next two weeks five children were abducted in separate incidents but all managed to escape. Nine year old Bruce Colin Wilson was then abducted and his body was found in May 1975 near Risdon Vale. O'Neill was a suspect and after interrogation led police to the body of Ricky Smith. Although arrested for both murders he was only tried for Ricky Smith's murder following legal practice at the time. O'Neill pleaded insanity, due to his head injuries from being shot in 1969, and claimed that police had held a gun to his head to get his confession.
After deliberating for three hours, the jury found O'Neill guilty and he was jailed for life. He applied for parole in 1991 but was turned down and has not re applied. He remains Tasmania's longest serving prisoner.
Read more about this topic: James Ryan O'Neill
Famous quotes containing the word arrest:
“One does not arrest Voltaire.”
—Charles De Gaulle (1890–1970)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me,
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain’s race invented be,
And blest Seth vexed us with Astronomie.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)