O'Leary of the Underworld by Kate Auty

Author:Kate Auty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743822807
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.

But in court, Kate Coffey, Margaret Fitzgerald, Pryor and Jackson all swore that there was no discussion about the bashing on the night Kim Chi was killed. In their evidence, all four said this conversation took place days later and, just as critically, it lacked specifics.

There is no doubt Kate Coffey and her sister concocted a story which assisted in driving acquittals of Morris and Moore. Corroborating each other, they swore that Pryor and Jackson talked about a general row over payment for a meal in the café and that Morris never hit Kim Chi. Coffey claimed to have a ‘wretched memory’ and she even suggested Pryor and Jackson had ‘invented the story’ about what happened at the Chinese café. Her evidence was central to the outcomes.

The perjury charges unfolded in a court pervaded by an air of flippancy. The press noted that on two occasions the public ‘laughed’, once when Margaret Fitzgerald told the judge the investigating detective was lying about something as benign as the timing of making her statement. When a nine-year-old boy was called to give evidence, the prosecutor threatened him twice with ‘prison’ if he didn’t make an effort to tell the truth. It was then that he complained about a ‘conspiracy’ to undermine the case and that the boy had apparently been warned by others not to answer prosecution questions. The bench agreed, commenting that the boy was ‘either simple or . . . very carefully tutored’.8

Remarkably, the Coffey/Fitzgerald clan walked away from these two hearings unscathed.

Theresa Fitzgerald married Morris after the murder charge was thrown out of court. Some years later, in 1906, she assumed the high moral ground and testified in Ballarat against a woman called Mason who was charged with killing her child by abortion.9

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