Colin Campbell Ross - Attempts To Clear Ross's Name

Attempts To Clear Ross's Name

Thomas Brennan became consumed with his failure to save the life of Colin Ross, eventually writing a book, The Gun Alley Tragedy, in which he attempted to establish that Ross had been hanged for a crime he did not commit. Although Brennan attracted supporters, it was not enough to persuade the Victorian government to have the case re-examined, and over the following years, interest began to wane among all but the most ardent of Ross's supporters.

In 1993, Kevin Morgan, a former school-teacher, became interested in Ross' case, and began to research the events surrounding the murder of Alma Tirtschke and Ross's execution. He read handwritten notes in the Bible Colin Ross had kept with him in prison, and which had been preserved by his family following his death. Morgan was moved by the simple notations in which Ross wrote of false witnesses, knowing that Ross had written these notes without expecting anyone else to read them.

Morgan examined interview records and court transcripts, and discovered information that had been kept from the court at the time, including the testimony of six reliable witnesses who placed Ross inside his saloon for the entire afternoon of Alma Tirtschke's murder. Furthermore, a cab driver, Joseph Graham, had heard screams coming from a building in Collins Street at 3.00 p.m., during the time that Ross was verified as having been in the saloon. Graham's interview had been disregarded by police and he had not been called to give evidence. Following Ross's arrest, Graham attempted to have his story told through a solicitor, but was not permitted to present his version of events in court. Morgan also noted that the witnesses against Ross were of dubious character and could have been motivated to present false testimony; John Harding's sentence was reduced after he stated that Ross had confessed to him in prison while Olive Maddox, the prostitute, Ivy Matthews, the disgruntled former employee and Julia Gibson, the fortune-teller, had shared the reward money. A closer examination of the long testimony of Charles Price regarding the hair samples seemed to support Ross's innocence.

Two years after he began researching the case, Kevin Morgan found a file in the Office of Public Prosecutions containing the original hair samples, which had been thought lost. He began a long administrative struggle for the right to submit the hair samples for DNA testing, finally achieving his aim in 1998. Two independent scientific authorities - the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and the forensics division of the Australian Federal Police - found that the two lots of hair did not come from the same person, thereby disproving with certainty the most damning piece of evidence presented at Colin Ross's trial.

On 4 October 2005, the families of both Colin Ross and Alma Tirtschke submitted a petition of mercy. On 23 October 2006 the Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls forwarded the 31-page petition to the Chief Justice, Marilyn Warren, requesting her to consider the plea for Ross. The subsequent pardon, granted on 27 May 2008, is the first example of a posthumous pardon in Victoria's legal history and is to date the only instance of a pardon for a judicially executed person in Australia.

The family of Alma Tirtschke believes that the pardon does not go far enough and that Ross should be exonerated. In a Fairfax Radio interview discussing the pardon, the murdered girl's second cousin recounted how her grandmother was preoccupied with the murder "She didn't say who was the right man but she said the wrong man was hung". In a later interview on the Nine Network's A Current Affair program, the family stated they believe the true murderer was a family member.. In his book, Kevin Morgan names the likely murderer as a man known to Alma and Viola Tirtschke who had pedophilic tendencies and was mistrusted by the girls.