The True Story of the KellyGang of Bushrangers Chapter 4 page 3

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The fact that Fitzpatrick had been drinking, or at least had taken more than one glass on his way to the Kellys’ that day, and was afterwards dismissed from the force, on the ground that he associated with the lowest people in the township, could not be trusted out of sight, and never did his duty, naturally inclined many people to doubt the strict accuracy of his story. A popular theory was that he had behaved in a blackguard way towards the Kellys’ unmarried sister, Kate, and thus incurred the enmity of her brothers, but to this Ned himself gave the most emphatic denial, and, as Captain Standish stated, one of the prisoners, Williamson, afterwards said that Fitzpatrick spoke the truth about the encounter. The constable’s story is therefore the most reliable of those extant, and upon its acceptance, as fact hinged the after events that make the Kelly gang’s history. Mrs Kelly, Skillion, and Williamson went to gaol, and Ned and Dan Kelly, for whose arrest the Government offered a reward of £200, disappeared from sight, and were never seen by the police again until they encountered and shot Kennedy and his party on the banks of the creek in the Wombat Ranges .

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