Thomas Griffin (Australian gold commissioner)

rdf:langString Thomas Griffin (Australian gold commissioner)

rdf:langString Thomas John Augustus Griffin (27 July 1832 – 1 June 1868) was an Australian police officer and gold commissioner who was executed in 1868, after being found guilty of the double murder of two fellow police officers, Constable John Francis Power and Constable Patrick William Cahill. The murders were committed on the banks of the Mackenzie River near the present-day site of the Bedford Weir at Blackwater, Queensland while the troopers were escorting a large sum of money from Rockhampton to Clermont, which Griffin stole and then hid when he returned to Rockhampton. The money was discovered after Griffin was executed when it was revealed he had attempted to conspire with a turnkey while locked in his cell, negotiating a possible escape and drawing a pencil sketch of the money's approximate location. In a notorious case of grave robbery, Griffin's grave was illegally exhumed more than a week after his execution, and his body deliberately decapitated and his head stolen.