Sundown murders

In February 2013, Bishop appealed to the Governor of South Australia, Kevin Scarce, to grant a posthumous pardon for Bailey but was declined.

Author and investigative journalist Stephen Bishop claims that detective Glen Patrick Hallahan lied on oath and in records of police interviews with Raymond Bailey. Detective Hallahan was one of the three high-ranking Queensland detectives known as the "Rat Pack" who had been exposed as corrupt by the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the late 1980s.

He was working at Mount Isa Hospital, Mount Isa, Queensland, when the law caught up with him. Bailey was arrested in Mount Isa in January 1958 on charges of false pretences in relation of a motor vehicle and being in possession of an unlicensed weapon. Two days later he was charged with the murder of Thyra Bowman. He was extradited to Adelaide where he stood trial.

Bailey was tried, convicted and executed in Adelaide Gaol. Bailey was hanged on 24 June 1958. His two brothers had visited him the day before.

The Sundown murders were the murders of Sally (Thyra) Bowman (43), her daughter Wendy Bowman (14), and family friend Thomas Whelan (22) on Sundown Station in northern South Australia outback in December 1957. The search for their killer was one of the biggest manhunts in South Australian history.

Pete and Sally Bowman with their two daughters Wendy and Marion managed Glen Helen station in the Northern Territory. In November 1957, a family friend named Thomas Whelan (22) travelled north to visit the family while on holiday. The Bowmans agreed to travel with Whelan back to Adelaide via Alice Springs by car. After arriving in Alice Springs on 4 December 1957, Pete and Marion took a plane and flew to Adelaide.

David Iles met Bailey when both men worked around Wirrulla, South Australia, in September 1957. Bailey and Iles struck up a friendship and the men went rabbit shooting. Iles later agreed to sell to Bailey his huntsman rifle but Bailey skipped town without paying for it. Iles took Constable Grope to the spot where the men fired the rifle and Grope recovered used cartridge cases. The cartridges later matched cartridges found at the murder scene.

The main points that Bishop advanced included that the murder weapon, which Bailey claimed he had sold to a man near Coober Pedy before the murders, was never found. The description of the murders in Bailey's confession contradicted the post mortem results. Bailey claimed to have shot all three of the victims as they ran from him; however, the autopsies indicated that the Bowmans and Whelan were shot while lying on the ground unconscious. During his trial, Bailey claimed that he had only signed the confession after hearing his wife crying in another room. Bailey told the court that detectives then told him that they would leave her alone if he signed. A grey Ford Zephyr was seen near the murder scene while Bailey drove a black 1938 DeSoto. Footprints believed to belong to the killer had been found at the murder scene, and were estimated as being a size 7 or 8. Bailey wore a size 5½ shoe.

Raymond John Bailey was born at Gilgandra on 3 December 1932. He had four brothers and a sister. Bailey left school at 14 and got work as a carpenter. He married young and worked for a time as an itinerant worker. He purchased a black 1938 DeSoto in Renmark in September 1957 and took a rifle he had agreed to buy but never paid for in Wirrulla.