Michael Connelly

Here is a dramatic blurb in the same style as your other Life & Death books:
A Poor Irish Childhood. A Violent Past. A Wife Murdered Behind Closed Doors.
Michael Connelly was raised in poverty in a rough coastal community in Galway, where he worked as a fisherman until he was nearly twenty. His life then took a darker turn.
Convicted first of stealing fifteen pounds, and later of a brutal assault in which a man was pushed from Galway Bridge after a quarrel, Connelly was sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation to Tasmania.
But transportation did not end the violence.
Years later, neighbours forced open the door of the Connelly home and entered with police. Inside, they found Mary Connelly lying dead on the floor, the top of her head almost beaten in.
The Life & Death of Michael Connelly tells the full story of a poor Irish fisherman turned convict, the woman whose life ended in terrible violence, and the execution that followed at Armidale.
Who was Michael Connelly? What shaped the anger and violence that followed him from Galway to the Australian colonies? And who was Mary Connelly, the wife whose death brought his troubled life to the gallows?
Author Helen Cottee traces Connelly’s journey from poverty and crime in Ireland, through transportation and colonial life, to the murder investigation, trial, conviction and execution by New South Wales state executioner Robert Rice Howard—better known as Nosey Bob.
After the body had hung for twenty minutes, it was lowered into a coffin of pine and cedar. The rope was cut away, the lid screwed down, and the executioners lit a fire in the yard and burned the rope used in the hanging.
That evening, at 7.30, Michael Connelly was buried in unhallowed ground behind the old lockup in Darling Street.
Drawing upon court records, transportation documents, newspaper reports, gaol archives and local history, this book reconstructs a bleak life marked by poverty, violence, exile and death.
This is not merely the story of a condemned man. It is also the story of Mary Connelly, the neighbours who discovered her body, and a community forced to confront a shocking act of domestic murder.
Part of the Life & Death series—preserving the untold stories of colonial Australia, one execution at a time.
For readers who love Australian history, Irish convict history, colonial true crime and the forgotten lives hidden within the records of crime and punishment.