It's safe to say the two blokes having a scratch around in the dirt at Wedderburn got a nasty shock when the remains of a man were uncovered.
Despite following up leads for years afterwards the police were never able to identify the victim.
But they never solved the mystery of his identity or who killed him.
Further reading -
Wedderburn Mystery Murder Suspected
When hoping to reopen the closed Morningstar Mine at Rushworth on 27th November 1908 some blokes got a nasty shock when decomposing matter was brought up with the mine cage; subsequent investigations discovered the very decayed bodies of a man and a woman in the water-logged mine shaft.
The woman's head was missing and never recovered despite bailing of the water from the mine and thorough searches for evidence. A scrap of newspaper sporting a bloody fingerprint, dated 28th August suggested this was the date the murders took place. Both bodies were badly broken and smashed up; so much so that the medical examiner was unable to locate any reproductive organs or much of the pelvis of the suspected female body, but owing to measurements they determined it was indeed a female.
Numerous people stated swaggies and others often camped at the site of the mine, one witness claiming he'd heard yelling at night some time earlier.
Missing friends and relatives were reported to the police but they were all safely located alive, leaving the police and coroner no answers as to the names of the couple or who had murdered them.
On 17th May 1927 the body of a deceased man, estimated to be aged 30, was discovered in a bathing box on the Ocean Beach of Sorrento, Victoria.
It was determined he had died from starvation and exposure approx. a week earlier.
Despite having tattoos - a figure of a lady, an American flag and the name 'T. McKenna', he was buried as an unknown.
Strong possibility he was a sailor lost overboard from a ship but no reports seem to have been made as such.
Coincidently there was a Thomas McKenna buried in Sorrento but there does not appear to be any link with the family.
To lose a cemetery is rather careless, but how one goes about losing it in the first place is so easy - just don't use it! Source; The ...
