Theories
Up to this point it had been taken for granted that Barclay had been killed by Bamford. Speculation now followed the line “that Bamford shot Barclay and afterwards Bamford was shot by some friend of the manager, in revenge, in the good old wild west manner.”
Police suspicion naturally fell on Harry Smith, but there was no direct evidence. In addition, he would have had to carry out a complex deception about the discovery of Barclay’s body, and he was present at the discovery of Bamford's. It is also unlikely he would have knowingly allowed the body of his friend Jim Barclay to lie where the murderer left it and be disturbed by animals for three weeks. He was not charged. Writing in 1980, Harry Stephenson seems to favour the theory that Smith “might have had an answer to the mystery” and noted that older cattlemen were still reluctant to discuss the case.
A second theory was that the two men had been victims of stock thieves. Wallace Mortimer suggests Barclay and later Bamford were perhaps killed by horse thieves, and cites “old timers are adamant in their belief such was the reason.” The Police report refutes this, pointing out that the only stock missing from Wonnangatta was Bamfords horse that had been recovered on Mount Howitt.
Wallace Mortimer dismissed any significance of the right shoe and a hat found placed near the crotch of Barclay's body. According to Mortimer, the idea that this implied a motive for the killing (Barclay, a ladies man, killed by a jealous husband) came from a novelist, "who had obviously done little or no research into the matter."
Read more about this topic: Wonnangatta Murders
Famous quotes containing the word theories:
“Our books of science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing the freshness and vigor and readiness to appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked merit in the ofttimes false theories of the ancients.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, technology, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because ‘experimental method’ used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own.”
—Ian Hacking (b. 1936)
“We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)