Police sergeant Robert Shallcrass pulled off a clever, insightful piece of detective work when he caught a gang of Australian bushrangers who killed at least six people in a series of robberies near South Island goldfields.
Known as the Burgess gang after their leader, ex-convict Dick Burgess, the four men preyed on miners and businessmen in Otago and on the West Coast.
In June they went to Nelson where, in a 24-hour period on the Maungatapu track, they ambushed, robbed and killed five men from the goldfields who were heading into town to bank their savings.
When the victims failed to turn up in Nelson, suspicion quickly fell on the gang who, like most robbers in the first flush of their success, could not resist flashing their ill gotten gains.
Shallcrass had some slender evidence connecting the gang to the missing men, and the magistrate allowed him to detain them in custody.
