Unsolved murders abound, however the city of Warwick on Queensland’s Darling Downs seems to get the strange ones. Here are just two of them. I told a version of this story on radio 4WK.

In 1901, there was a discovery in the Warwick cemetery (pictured above) of human remains buried at a depth of just two and a half feet.

It was a corpse, uncoffined, but dressed, booted and spurred. There was no record of its lawful burial. The body had been buried in line with the other graves on each side, and the boots were English-made.

It was a brilliant crime, because who would ever look for a murdered body in a graveyard? 

The Irishman Jimmy Byrne lived close to the Warwick cemetery and for over thirty years was the gravedigger. Jimmy discovered the unidentified remains and what he found was simply reburied at the bottom of the grave he was digging anyway.

His son was sub-Inspector Rody Byrne with the Queensland mounted police. He was in charge of the Mitchell police station, served right across Queensland including Toowoomba and Dalby, and was involved in the arrest of the bushrangers the Kenniff brothers. Paddy Kenniff was ultimately hung. But even Rody couldn’t solve his father’s mystery.

The identity of the body, and how it came to be there, remains a mystery to this day.

And then in 1912 there was the tragedy in which Miss Margaret Dorothy Zillman lost her life at Rosenthal just outside of Warwick. The thirty-six-year-old single lady came from a family in Nundah on the northside of Brisbane. She was poisoned by eating chocolates laced with strychnine.

For weeks there were no solid clues. It appeared to become a greater mystery as every week passed. The general impression in Warwick was that the crime would surely be added to the growing list of unsolved mysteries.

At first detectives sought a woman, then a man. It seemed the probabilities of a conviction, or even an arrest, were always small and seemed to be growing smaller by the day.

An Albert Burgess testified at the magistrate’s inquiry. He had become engaged to Miss Zillman just four months earlier. The Burgess family were influential in the district. At the time there was a Burgess on the Warwick council, and a Burgess was elected chairman of the Rosenthal shire council. A Richard Burgess had been an early arrest in Dalby two years earlier in another unsolved crime, the Gatton murders.

The strychnine was strangely thought to have come from constable Thomas Adams, a Boer War veteran, who had taken the poison to the house where Miss Zillman met her fate.

While the constable was inside, Albert Burgess’s sister was hanging around his car where the strychnine was, and she was chatting to her brothers.

Eventually a Robert Burgess was arrested and charged with wilful murder. He appeared in the Warwick police court and was committed to stand trial at the Supreme Court at Toowoomba.

But the evidence was flimsy at best. It was based on the handwriting on the paper that was wrapped around the box of chocolates. The handwriting apparently didn’t look anything like the sample provided by the accused.

Just days before the trial was set to begin, the charges were dropped. No one was ever brought to justice for the murder that made headlines around Australia.

Remarkably, seven years later that there was a copycat attempted murder in Ipswich when another woman was poisoned by strychnine chocolates. On that occasion the intended victim survived.

And co-incidentally regards the constable Adams, he was later stationed at Nundah which is where the Zillman family lived, and where the victim Dorothy is buried.

I’m hoping that even today someone knows something from their grandparents about the mystery body uncovered by the Warwick grave digger in 1901, or the case of the poisoned chocolates of 1912, because both of these Warwick murders remain a mystery.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Warwick General Cemetery gates, 2015 – Kerry Raymond Wikimedia Commons.
Patrick Kenniff on trial for murder. – State Library of Queensland.
Robert Burgess charged with murder – Find A Grave added by Jigsaw 2021.
Margaret Dorothy Zillman headstone, Nundah cemetery – Find A Grave added by MBeaven 2017.