The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 by Elizabeth Finkel

they used a type of lime that slowed decomposition instead of hastening it.
    So when the grounds were dug up for development in 1929, startled workers found the site full of skeletons. Officials began to move the remains to another prison. But in a scene of chaos that became a local scandal, a crowd of schoolboys and other onlookers ran amok among the coffins, seizing bones – including, it was thought, the skulls of Ned Kelly and Frederick Bailey Deeming, the notorious British serial killer who may have been Jack the Ripper.
    The remaining bones were reburied at Pentridge prison, and the skulls were recovered soon after being stolen. They then embarked on a separate, winding journey through the back doors of a number of institutions.
    In the 1970s, one skull was put on display in a jail museum alongside Kelly’s death mask, a plaster cast impression made shortly after his execution. (It is unknown whether that mask was the original or a copy.)
    But in 1978 the skull was stolen again, and a man named Tom Baxter told journalists that he had it.
    Mr Baxter held onto the skull for over three decades, promising to return it if the government gave Kelly a Christian burial. The government did not respond, and the stalemate continued until 2008, when yet another excavation uncovered more prisoners’ remains. At least 3000 bone fragments were exhumed and sent to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. It was thought that Ned Kelly’s bones might be among them.
    Shortly after that, Mr Baxter handed over a fragile, sun-bleached skull to the authorities.
    The forensic institute conducted a 21 month investigation of the skull, mixing historical detective work with an array of innovative scientific analyses.
    Scientists used historical photographs, cranial plaster casts and a copy of the Kelly death mask to determine whether the skull from Mr Baxter had indeed been unearthed in the 1929 exhumation. When it came to the skull’s genetic material, however, the scientists faced some serious obstacles. DNA is well preserved in bone but highly vulnerable to contamination. They could not simply cut a square out of the skull, grind it to a powder and extract DNA from that; Joy Beyer, a molecular biologist at the institute, said she was told that the skull could not be damaged.
    Finally, the institute sent samples from the skull and other remains to a forensic laboratory in Argentina that specialises in degraded and aged remains. That lab successfully extracted DNA from almost all the samples.
    Even so, the DNA meant little in isolation. The investigators needed something, or someone, to match it against.
    Hoping to find DNA in Kelly’s dried blood, they located the boots, bag and sash he wore on the night he was shot. ‘Dried specimens on cloth can preserve DNA for hundreds, even thousands, of years,’ said David Ranson, a pathologist at the institute.
    But the boot and the bag had no usable DNA. The sash, which they found in a country museum, had been thoroughly washed before it was put on display. And a search for the original Kelly death mask – which might hold a stray eyelash or some skin – came up empty.
    Next, the investigators looked for relatives. They found Leigh Olver, an art teacher who was descended from Ned Kelly’s mother, down a direct line of women. He donated blood for analysis, and they compared his mitochondrial DNA with that of the skull.
    On 1 September 2011, the forensic institute announced thedisappointing results of that analysis. It appears that after all this time, after being abducted more than once, placed on display for the world to see, hidden for decades, cherished, handled, sought after and tested, the skull is not Ned Kelly’s. ‘Mr Olver’s DNA and the DNA from the skull do not match,’ said Fiona Leahy, a historian and legal adviser at the institute.
    There was one rather powerful note of consolation. The investigators found a match between the