Australia Australia - Bridget Baker, 9, Bunya Reserve, QLD, 12 May 1888

In 1888, little Bridget Baker went missing while delivering dinner to her father while he worked, and was later found dead not far from her bushland home 14 miles from Brisbane. She was brutally bludgeoned, stabbed, her genitals violated with a foreign object.

Her little brother said a black man took his sister.

Just as she'd apparently been abducted and brutally raped by a black man, almost one year exactly before her death -- and in exactly the same place...

However, the police did not believe this account, and arrested Bridget's --mother-- for the crime. Though Mrs. Baker, a woman of "violent temper" who was known to abuse her kids, was never convicted for her daughter's murder, it seems it was not for want of suspicion.

It's all very strange... read about it here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120322115026/http://www.gattonmurders.com/BridgetBaker.pdf

And a pile of original newspaper articles here:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=Bunya+tragedy

I'll have to study this one a bit more carefully before coming up with any solid opinions on it. But my gut says Mrs. Baker was having an affair with somebody dangerous....

I think Mrs Baker was a lucky woman. The prior rape of the child was believed to have been done with a stick-I think this child suffered enormously. Whatever happened to Jimmy I wonder?

Looking at the head wounds and genital mutilation.. the posing of her body...the general ferocity of the attack, I am reminded of the Gatton murders, which happened 10 years later and 105km from Bunya (keeping in mind that such distances in Australia are 'nothing' to people used to travelling them, even in those days).

Norah Murphy, one of the three Murphy children murdered in Gatton, was obviously the target of the crime, and the attack on her was clearly sexually motivated. More on the Murphy murders here:

Australia The Murphy Murders. Gatton,1898 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

Another murder reminiscent of these is that of Arthur Hill, 16, in 1889 - 31 km from Gatton, and 71 km from where Bridget was killed in Bunya.

In Arthur's case, he was shot in the head like Michael Murphy (who was around the same age) - and in both these murders, the kids' horses were also shot in the head...

Was there a serial killer hunting victims in outback Australia, in the era when Jack the Ripper was terrorising London?

believe09 said:

I think Mrs Baker was a lucky woman. The prior rape of the child was believed to have been done with a stick-I think this child suffered enormously. Whatever happened to Jimmy I wonder?

Click to expand...

Poor Jimmy.. he was such a little thing when all this happened. Gods know what trauma that woman inflicted on her other kids.

She may well have murdered Bridget, and it certainly looks that way - but there's room for suspicion that she may have been protecting somebody else, too. She seems terrified, at times, or that's what I picked up from reading the articles. And I'm pretty sure she had a boyfriend - the guy who gave her a picture of himself. But I'll have to read more carefully before I come to any firm conclusions.