The sordid tale of Thomas Ley, the 'minister for murder'

Tim The Yowie Man digs up the story of Thomas Ley, a former Australian politician and convicted murderer.

Transcript

00:00The National Library of Australia is quite possibly the last place you'd expect to find

00:09someone's ashes. However, squirrelled away here in its manuscripts collection is an urn

00:16that is believed to contain the ashes of politician Thomas Ley, who worked just across the road

00:22in Old Parliament House in the mid-1920s. Shortly before being accessioned by the Library

00:30in 1984, the urn, along with other items including a metal cigarette box engraved with Ley's

00:36name, were discovered in a backyard shed in Wollongong. They'd been there for at least

00:4130 years. Ley was bestowed the moniker of Minister for Murder after several of his rivals

00:47vanished in mysterious circumstances in the 1920s. After losing his seat in 1928, he

00:54moved to England, where in 1947 he was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for his role in

01:02murdering a man he believed was having an affair with his mistress. Due to his former

01:09life as both a federal and state politician, he even served as Minister for Justice in

01:14the NSW Government in the early 1920s. The case caused a media frenzy and became known

01:20as the Chalk Pit Murders, as the man's body was found in a chalk pit in Surrey, not far

01:26from Ley's home. Ley's sentence was commuted to life and he was declared insane and sent

01:32to an asylum for criminals, where he died several months later. What's the most unusual

01:38item you've seen in a library?