Ending over 130 years of speculation, a “CSI”-style investigation and DNA analysis has proved conclusively that a skeleton unearthed from a mass grave at Australia’s Pentridge Prison is indeed that of fabled Irish-Aussie outlaw Ned Kelly.
Here is a look at key events in the life of Australia’s most notorious folk hero and outlaw:
* Ned Kelly was born in Victoria, Australia, to an Irish convict father somewhere between June 1854 and June 1855.
* Although his family seemed to always be in trouble with authorities, Kelly’s real disillusionment came in December 1866 when his father Red died of complications following his incarceration for stealing and butchering a neighbor’s calf.
* When he was 14, Kelly’s own run-ins with the law began when he was arrested for assaulting a local Chinese pig farmer. This incident triggered law enforcement’s dogged, almost constant pursuit of Kelly.
* The next year, Kelly is branded a “juvenile bushranger” after being arrested and charged as an accomplice of a local bushranger. He was released a month later. Bushrangers were similar to Wild West outlaws in the United States and used the Australian bush as a hideout from police.
* Next, Kelly served a brief jail stint for his part in assaulting a neighbor and sending his wife an indecent letter containing calves’ testicles.
* After being freed from jail for only three weeks, 16-year-old Kelly served three years hard labor for receiving a stolen horse.
* Kelly spent his later teenage years being repeatedly accused of stealing livestock, receiving stolen property and assault. It is even rumored he started a cattle-rustling operation with his brother and stepfather.
* During his arrest for public drunkenness in 1877, Kelly broke free from four policemen, including a constable named Lonigan. During the altercation, he told officer Lonigan that if he ever shoots a man, it will be him. A year later he did.
* Kelly was next accused of assaulting and shooting a policeman who visited his house asking about some stolen cattle in the wrist. His family claimed Kelly wasn’t even home at the time and that the officer was injured while being prevented from harassing Kelly’s sister.
* Kelly’s mother Ellen was jailed for three years because of the wrist shooting incident. Kelly and his brother went into hiding for the next two years to avoid arrest.
* Kelly, brother Dan and friends Joe Byrne and Steve Hart had a shootout Oct. 25, 1878, in which three policemen were killed, including Lonigan, according to AFP. Following the killings, the Kelly gang went on the run and officially became outlaws.
* The Kelly Gang spent its time running from an 8,000 pound bounty, taking hostages, robbing banks and the rich and becoming folk heroes to the masses of country people who saw them as symbols of Australian resistance against imperial Britain.
* In response to the police killings, the Victorian Parliament passed the Felons’ Apprehension Act, which made it legal for anyone to shoot members of Kelly’s gang.
* Kelly donned his famous homemade suit of armor and was wounded and then arrested following a nine-hour gun battle at Glenrowan Hotel on June 28, 1880, during which three members of his gang are killed.
* Kelly was put on trial and drew the sympathy of over 30,000 citizens, who signed a petition to spare his life.
* He was hanged Nov. 11, 1880, at the Old Melbourne Jail at the age of 25. Immediately following his execution, Kelly’s head was removed and he was buried in an unmarked grave on the prison grounds.
* The bodies of Kelly and 33 other prisoners were removed and reburied at Pentridge Prison in 1929.
* When developers began to turn Pentridge into housing in 2009, 33 coffins were found buried in a mass grave. Kelly’s was rumored to be among these.
*Kelly’s remains were positively identified using DNA Sept. 1.