Story: Gangs

The death masks of three of the four members of the murderous Burgess gang are seen on display at the Nelson Provincial Museum in March 1964. The gang was named after the ringleader, Richard Burgess, who had murdered others on the West Coast, and in Victoria, Australia. The men were hanged for murdering four travellers on the track over the Maungatapu Range near Nelson in 1866. The fourth member of the gang, Joseph Sullivan, who turned Queen’s evidence, spent seven years in Dunedin jail before being deported to England.