Outlaw: the story of Richard Burgess

Richard Burgess may be New Zealand's most prolific serial killer. In the 1860s he and his outlaw gang roved the West Coast, robbing and murdering dozens of people. The full number of victims is still unknown.

"Potentially he was New Zealand's worst serial killer..."

Richard Burgess may be the most prolific murderer New Zealand has ever seen.

It's estimated the death toll his gang of outlaws inflicted while roving the goldfields of the South Island in the 1860s ranged anywhere up to 35 people.

The Burgess gang are best known for the so-called Maungatapu murders, crimes which saw all but one of the gang hanged. The lone survivor was Joseph Sullivan, who turned traitor to save his own skin.

Burgess' story has inspired several books and magazine features. Currently, a play about his gang's exploits is touring the Marlborough Region.

He sealed his place in New Zealand history with a 46-page confession described as "without peer in the literature of murder" by the famous American author Mark Twain.

"It certainly does make for amazing reading," says Wayne Martin, author of Murder on the Maungatapu. "Right the way through he's quoting anecdotes from classic texts and scripture."

Burgess had a love of literature instilled by his mother while growing up in London's Hatton Garden in the 1840s. But although she passed this interest on to her son, she wasn't able to curb his violent, criminal streak .

"He followed your classic Victorian street criminal way of life," says Wayne Martin. " from pick-pocketing to crimes of violence eventually caught up with him and saw him transported to Australia."

Martin describes Burgess as "hopelessly addicted to crime". And with more than 80 percent of the police force having resigned to seek their fortune in the gold rush in the 1850s, Australia wasn't the best place to kick a criminal addiction.

From his late teens and into his twenties Burgess roved the goldfields of Melbourne as part of a gang, robbing miners. Eventually those crimes caught up with him and he was introduced to the horrifically brutal colonial justice system - in particular, the floating prison hulks anchored off the coast of Melbourne where he spent eight years of his sentence.

Wayne Martin believes the brutality of those prison ships is what turned Burgess from a relatively normal criminal into a monster.

"The prisoners on those hulks swore that if they got out they were not coming back to a place like this. They were not going to leave witnesses to testify against them," he says. "That was the seed of the monster he became and also this policy of killing not to leave witnesses."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details