THE MURCHISON MURDERS

Three murders, three perfect murders… near the rabbit-proof fence in desolate Western Australia. Perfect - except the process was exactly as described in Arthur Upfield’s crime novel The Sands of Windee (1931). It had all began in 1929, when Upfield was working on the fence and plotting a new novel featuring the Aboriginal detective, Napoleon Bonaparte. His friend George Ritchie had devised a brilliant method of disposing a body in the outback, so brilliant that Upfield offered Ritchie a pound if he could come up with a flaw in the process. On October 5 1929, Upfield, Ritchie and Snowy Rowles, the northern boundary rider for the fence, all met at the Camel Station and discussed the murder method in the forthcoming book…This is Upfield’s own account of the Snowy Rowles murder case, augmented by police photographs and Upfield’s evidence, colourised for the first time.