The day. The death penalty your capital punishment has been abolished in Australia for many years now.

In this two-part episode I look back at two cases, Jean Lee and Ronald Ryan, who were the last female and last male to be executed in Australia and the controversy over their convictions

that still remains today. In part two I look at Ronald Ryan the last person to be

legally executed in Australia.

Hi, I'm your host Cambo, grab a beer and pull up a deck chair.

This is True Crime Island, another true crime podcast. So the next person to be executed in Victoria would be the last man to hang, Ronald Joseph Ryan.

Ryan was born in Carlton, Melbourne on the 21st of February 1925. Ryan had a reasonably uneventful childhood until the age of 11

where he was busted stealing a watch from the next door neighbor.

This brought the family to the attention of the state welfare authorities.

Ryan ended up being sent to Rupert Wood, the Salizian orders school for orphaned, wayward and neglected boys in

Sunbury. Probably a good place for a wayward boy to learn the trade of waywardness.

Anyway, soon his sisters would be sent away as well.

It looks like the parents were neglecting the children because they were alcoholics.

In September 1939, Ryan ran away from Rupert Wood and with his half-brother George Thompson, they got work in and around

Bau-Ranaled, New South Wales, doing odd jobs such as sleeper cutting and rue shooting.

Ryan would send any extra money he had to his mom who was in turn looking

after his sick alco father. So Ryan at this stage seems to be doing the right thing, taking care of his parents and working hard.

In 1945, Ryan rented a house in Bowel-ranled where his mother and sisters lived together.

His father stayed in Melbourne and died a year later from miner's lung.

At age 22 Ryan started to go to Melbourne on the weekends and amazingly he hooked up with the

mayor of Hawthorne's daughter Dorothy Janet George.

So Ronald Ryan was really punching above his weight catching the eye Dorothy and I would have been

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