Fifty years ago this week, Ronald Ryan was the last man hanged under the death penalty – it’s a reminder of why we should never entertain its return

Fifty years ago, Jan, Wendy and Pip Ryan huddled in the lounge room of their Hawthorn home and waited for the state of Victoria to kill their father. Their mother, Dorothy, had turned off the radio and TV. “Mum had everything dead quiet,” Wendy told the Age in 2007. It was an effort to strip away all the scrutiny that had marked the high-profile case of her condemned husband, Ronald Ryan. They held each other and wept.

We didn’t want the rope. If we had known Ryan would hang, I think we would have gone for manslaughter. One of the jurors

Ronald Ryan was the last person executed in Australia. What made his case extraordinary was Victorian premier Henry Bolte’s determination to see him hang, the protests that erupted across a nation turning away from capital punishment, and the role of the media in campaigning for Ryan’s life.

A recent Melbourne Herald Sun article about the Ryan case quoted Bolte’s notorious response to a journalist who had asked what the premier was doing when the execution took place at 8am half a century ago: “One of the ‘S’s’, I suppose,” said Bolte. “A shit, a shave or a shower.”

Comments at the bottom of the article cheered for Bolte and for the return of the death penalty. That’s no surprise. Populist measures for dealing with crime and national security have been gaining traction for more than a decade.

It’s easy to call for the reinstatement of capital punishment when you think about it in the abstract. As time passes and memories fade we lose sight of the trauma the death penalty causes for all involved. We forget the flaws, political point-scoring and arbitrariness that characterises its implementation, and we avoid confronting the immensity of the act of taking another’s life.

In 1965, Ryan was serving time for a string of petty thefts. He was desperate to save his relationship with his wife and to see his young daughters. He devised a plan with fellow inmate Peter Walker to break out. During the escape, prison guard George Hodson was shot and killed. People were shocked by the crime and fearful during Ryan’s 19 days on the run with Walker.

Mug shot of Ronald Ryan, the last person executed in Australia 50 years ago (3 Feb 1967). Picture sourced from internet - general pic used everywhere, with no byline and requested by Lucy Clark. (sydney, Feb 4, 2017)

The trial evidence presented by the Crown was weak, and the question of who fired the fatal shot remains contested.

The case divided public opinion. When the jury found Ryan guilty, Justice John Starke imposed the mandatory sentence of death. Many, including jury members, expected the state government to commute his sentence to a prison term. Judicial executions had become rare and public support for capital punishment was in decline. Since 1951, all thirty-five capital cases in Victoria had been commuted.

Tensions escalated when Bolte announced his resolve to hang Ryan. Melbourne newspapers, universities, churches and some lawyers, campaigned against Bolte’s position. Some speculated he wanted to look strong on law and order for upcoming elections. Barry Jones, leader of the Victorian Anti-Hanging Committee said: “I doubt that Ryan had any intention to kill, but I am certain that Bolte did.”

As Ryan’s legal options diminished, protests grew more intense. Thousands signed petitions; ABC radio stopped broadcasting for two minutes in silent protest.Seven of the jurors wrote to Bolte’s cabinet pleading for mercy. One later told the Sun newspapers: “We didn’t want the rope. If we had known Ryan would hang, I think we would have gone for manslaughter.”

On the eve of Ryan’s execution, 3,000 people gathered outside Pentridge prison. Archival film footage shows police carrying protesters away from the gates and into police vans. Some brought sleeping bags or mats and camped overnight.

By morning the crowd was a little smaller and a hot wind blew dust across the gathering. Some women wore fashionable frocks and carried expensive-looking leather purses; students with open plaid shirts and short sleeves. People dumped their bikes on the footpaths and moved closer to Pentridge’s gates. The mood was sombre. Men and women wiped tears from their eyes, some stood arm-in- arm. Placards held aloft read: “Not in our name”; “Mercy, not two murders”; “No evidence, hang Bolte”; and “Even Jesus would never forgive what you do.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A vigil to remember Ronald Ryan was held outside Pentridge prison in Melbourne on Friday. Photograph: Billy Griffiths

Fourteen journalists were among the witnesses allowed into Pentridge. Ryan wore an open-neck shirt and grey denim trousers and looked incongruously small and pale. Sydney journalist Ron Saw reported that the prisoner “hardly seemed to be a man at all; either from drugs or exhaustion or perhaps even some inexplicable last-minute composure, he seemed more like a boy waiting to be caned.”



As the tower clock outside the prison neared eight, the crowd observed two minutes of silence. A stooped, elderly woman in a headscarf prayed with her clasped hands pressed to her lips. The whole of Melbourne seemed to pause in silence. People stood outside Flinders Street station and gazed up at the clock.

Even if citizens were prevented from seeing the violence firsthand – from hearing the spine snap after the drop, or the wheeze of air leaving the body – the execution was still a public spectacle.

I had no idea Ryan had children. I had heard the basics about the case from all the usual places – parents, teachers, radio and books. The emphasis was on the politics and the media coverage, and the significance of the event as a marker of social change in Australia.



I doubt that Ryan had any intention to kill, but I am certain that Bolte did. Barry Jones

Lately I’ve been reading through some harrowing material researching the death penalty. I thought I was becoming desensitised. Then I read about Ryan’s daughters in their lounge room with their mum, waiting for eight o’clock. They held on to the hope that the phone would ring and there would be a reprieve. One of them noticed she’d torn her handkerchief to shreds. Thirteen-year-old Wendy Ryan couldn’t face school. She wandered the streets, distraught.

On the eve of his execution Ryan wrote a letter to his daughters on a roll of toilet paper. It passed through the hands of journalist Evan Whitton on its way to the Ryan family. According to Whitton, these final words read: “Goodbye, my darlings, and may you get the love and luck you all deserve. I am not afraid, and I think the credit is largely yours. Lovingly yours, Dad.”

The girls weren’t allowed to see him before the execution. They were even denied the dignity and mourning that would come with visiting his grave site.

“We were told from the time Dad died that we would never be allowed in to see his grave,” Wendy said in a television interview around the time of Bolte’s death in 1990. “He belongs to the government now,” they were told. The state held that power over the family for decades. It wasn’t until 2007, after the murdered guard’s daughter Carole Hodson told the Herald Sun that she jumped and danced on Ryan’s grave, that the Victorian government gave permission for Ryan’s body to be exhumed and buried next to his deceased ex-wife in Portland cemetery.

I emailed Pip Ryan and asked if she wanted to talk about her experience. She was gracious and understood my reason for asking, but she said that all three sisters had decided to decline interviews for the anniversary. I couldn’t think of anything to say in parting to express my sorrow to her. I thought about the three girls on that couch again and had to walk away from my computer.

Change of name

When someone close to me went to prison in the early 2000s his son was a toddler. He would ride along in the backseat of the car to Goulburn jail with different family members to visit his dad. The finish time for visits was the worst. If he cried, we would all cry. I resented the guards and hated Goulburn. I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like for the Ryan kids to have their father taken away and killed by the government.

The Ryans had to change their last name. The children suffered taunts in the playground and their treatment in the community was a continual reminder of the painful events. As sociologist Michael Radelet says, “executions tend to create an ever-widening circle of tragedy, often affecting three generations.” Some consider the families of the condemned “hidden victims.” They are often shunned and receive little support.

Supporters of the death penalty argue that because the victims of crime also struggle with enduring loss and grief, the retribution should extend to punish innocent relatives of the perpetrator. Often the victims of crime disagree. Carole Hodson was 13 at the time her father was killed in the prison escape, the same age as Wendy Ryan when her father was hanged. Hodson has declared she doesn’t support the death penalty; it only served to bring more trauma to her life.

There are so few arguments for the death penalty that aren’t countered by criminological research that supporters usually only follow one line now – the need for vengeance, or victims’ rights. Killing someone doesn’t make up for loss of a loved one. Most victim’s families say as much and some, like Carole Hodson, say it makes things worse. The families of victims of crime do need support and as a society we could do a lot better – but increasing the number of innocent people who must suffer is not a solution.

Decline in support

Some people forget what it means to take someone’s life. Polling shows a decline in support for the death penalty for murder, but a majority of Australians support the return of capital punishment for acts of terrorism.

Politicians are capitalising on fears over law and order, the global economy, national security, and the wars we pursue in the Middle East. Barnaby Joyce suggested Australia should have a conversation about its reinstatement. Populist Liberal politician George Christensen has called for its return. Christensen, like Trump, has endorsed Philippines President Duterte’s murderous war on drugs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coalition backbencher George Christensen has called for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

I wonder what motivates these opinions. In his book The Authoritarians, psychologist Bob Altemeyer says people with authoritarian personality types collect beliefs from people they trust, not through reasoning and evidence. He writes: “Research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalised beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and – to top it all off – a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.”

I was angry when I read callous online comments around the time of the execution of Bali Nine members, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, in April 2015. After researching the long history of the fight to abolish extreme punishment, the struggle to win freedoms from the abuse and excesses of state power, and the trauma the death penalty causes to society, the comments were naïve and glib.

But it’s also naïve of me to expect people to think in moral absolutes; that you can’t oppose the death penalty for some crimes but support it for others – that’s always been the case with the death penalty. We tend to call for the most radical and forceful solutions for whatever problems we fear most or that we perceive are out of control. At the moment in Nigeria it’s kidnappings, in the Philippines it’s drugs, in Australia it’s terrorism.

Researchers Marc Hetherington and Jonathan D Weiler say authoritarian personalities are a small subset of the population and they only become “activated” when they perceive threats from “outsiders” or feel panicked about the pace of social change. However, they warn that if “threat messages” are sustained, such as we have witnessed over the last decade during the “war on terror” and the scapegoating of refugees, some people who do not have an authoritarian personality type begin to look to the same strongmen making promises to keep them safe and restore order with militaristic, black-and-white solutions. That’s when populist authoritarian leaders can gain enough support to become significant in politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Australians Andrew Chan (R) and Myuran Sukumaran (C) were convicted of drug trafficking and executed in Indonesia in April 2015. Photograph: Made Nagi/EPA

Saying supporters of the death penalty are illogical or barbaric isn’t going to change their views. Ignoring the emotions of the fearful among us and hammering them with statistics and research only serves to strengthen their position. What’s interesting about a Morgan poll prior to the executions in Bali in 2015 is that when pollsters asked specifically if Chan and Sukumaran should be executed, respondents changed their minds and no longer supported the death penalty. In the years the pair were on death row, the Australian public learned about their plight, their personalities, the faults in the Australian and Indonesian justice systems, the political theatrics of executions, the capacity for individuals to be rehabilitated, and the futile injustice and brutality of state killing. In the poll question about the death penalty for drug trafficking overseas, a reminder of a unique story about identifiable individuals shifted support to its lowest level.

There will always be some who support extreme measures to deal with perceived social problems. They will continue to comment at the bottom of news articles. The key is ensuring they stay such a small group that they remain insignificant for how we run our society. Those of us who care about democracy and fairness and want to prevent the agenda of a few extremists from taking hold will need different approaches for different audiences. Stats play an important role in understanding our society, but others need stories. Working to allay fears about the state of the world will drain the authoritarian fringes of their popular support.

Learning about our history, reflecting on Ronald Ryan’s story, reminds us to never forget why we abolished the death penalty.