page_title: Dan Kelly (bushranger)
section_title: Murder
hierarchical_section_title: Dan Kelly (bushranger) / Kelly Gang / Murder
caption_attribution_description: English: Close up of Dan Kelly's helmet, held in the Victoria Police Museum, Melbourne.
context_page_description: Daniel Kelly was an Australian bushranger and outlaw. The son of an Irish convict, he was the younger brother of the bushranger Ned Kelly. Dan and Ned killed three policemen at Stringybark Creek in northeast Victoria, near the present-day town of Tolmie, Victoria. With two friends, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, the brothers formed the Kelly Gang. They robbed banks, took over whole towns, and kept the people in Victoria and New South Wales frightened. For two years the Victorian police searched for them, locked up their friends and families, but could not find them. Dan Kelly died during the infamous siege of Glenrowan.
  More books have been written about the Kelly Gang than any other subject in Australian history. The Kelly Gang were the subject of the world's first full-length feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in 1906.
context_section_description: In June 1880, the Kelly Gang came out of hiding. They knew that Joe Byrne's friend, Aaron Sherritt, had been giving information to the police. Four policemen were staying at Sherritt's house, near Beechworth, to protect him. Dan Kelly and Byrne went to Sherritt's house late at night and took hostage his neighbour, a German called Weekes and used him to trick Sherritt out of the house. When Sherritt opened the door, Byrne shot him dead. The policemen were hiding under the bed. Kelly and Byrne rode quickly back to Glenrowan where Ned Kelly and Hart had forced many of the town people into a hotel, the Glenrowan Inn. They also had forced railway workers to pull up the train tracks. They knew that more police would be sent by train to Beechworth to find them. They wanted the train to crash when it reached the place where tracks had been removed near Glenrowan. The bushrangers, wearing homemade armour, would then capture any of the policemen that were alive after the crash. With the police out of the way, the Kelly Gang would then go into Benalla and rob the bank. The captured police would be released when Ellen Kelly, William Williamson, and William Skillion, were let out of gaol.
  The plan did not work because the four policemen did not come out of Sherritt's house until the morning. This meant that the news of the murder did not reach Melbourne as quickly as the Kelly Gang had hoped. The people held prisoner in the hotel became restless. Ned organised music and Dan joined in dancing to keep the people in the hotel entertained. Dan also organised some sporting games including long jump and hop, step and jump. Dan wanted to leave Glenrowan when they knew the plan was not going to work because the train was late. Ned Kelly let Thomas Curnow, the school master, go home to his wife. Dan told his brother not to trust Curnow, and to keep him at the hotel. Curnow did go home, where he discussed with his wife about doing something, but after hearing the train approaching, he ran to the railway line with a lantern and his wife's red silk scarf and at about 3.00am he was able to stop the train before it reached the broken rails. The police quickly left the train and placed themselves around the hotel so that the Kelly Gang was trapped inside.
caption: Dan Kelly's helmet on display at the Victoria Police Museum, Melbourne
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