Ned Kelly is finally to be laid to rest in his adopted homeland of Australia – 132 years after he was hanged for murder.

A great-grandmother in New Zealand clams that she is in possession of, the famous Irish Australian outlaw, Ned Kelly’s skull.
 
Anna Hoffman (74) says she was on vacation in Melbourne, Australia, when a security guard gifted her the skull saying it was “Ned’s head”. During the 1960s and 70s she courted notoriety as a witch and met this uniformed man at a family dinner in 1980.
 
When Hoffman recently heard that the skull was missing she said she was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.
 
She told the New Zealand Herald “When I heard that my heart skipped a beat. It made sense because of all of the secretiveness around it.”
 
Hoffman’s news piqued the interest of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, the scientists who matched Kelly’s remains to his closest surviving relatives.
 
The great-grandmother told the NZ Herald, “We got talking about skulls and the next day he turned up with this skull. He said it was Ned Kelly's skull, and told me, 'Put it in the bottom of your bag and wrap it up'.”
 
She said Kelly’s skull became part of her 20 skull collection, which she has cared for over the past 20 years.
 
“I have treated it with respect, I haven't lit candles in it or drunk red wine out of it or anything bohemian like that. I don't want to let it out of my possession unless it is his skull.”
 
Spokeswoman for the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine said they want to learn more about the skull.
 
They said, “There is a chance that that is his head, although it is a long shot. That would be wonderful if it was.
 
"It's either out there somewhere or it has disintegrated into nothing."
 
Forensics expert at Auckland University, Gina McFarlane, said she believed the skull had been used in teaching and therefore was less likely to be that of Ned Kelly.
 
She said, “It could be five years old, it could be 100 years old. The fact that the top of the cranium has been cut off and reattached by wires indicates it's a teaching skeleton."
 
Hoffman has said she would return the skull to Kelly's surviving if it was in fact their relative’s.

The remains of famed folk hero and rebel Ned Kelly will be returned to his family in Ireland  for a proper private burial, 132 years after his execution in Australia.

The remains of Ned Kelly, the notorious Irish-Australian bushranger from the 1870s, are once again at the heart of a disagreement.
 
Late last year, the Victorian State Government identified Kelly’s headless body using DNA and Attorney-General Robert Clark made the decision to return Kelly’s remains to his family.
 
Kelly was sentenced to death for his gang’s murder of three policemen. He was hanged in Melbourne Gaol on November 11, 1880.
 
Initially, Kelly’s body was buried in the grounds of the jail. His remains and the bones of other prisoners were exhumed and reburied in a mass grave at the newer Pentridge Prison when Melbourne Gaol closed in 1929. The remains from that mass grave were exhumed in 2009.
 
Today, the developer of the of the former Pentridge Prison may want to keep the remains, as the exhumation certificate reportedly says the body would be given to the prison for use in a future project.
 
However, Anthony Griffiths, Kelly’s great-grandnephew, is confident that Clark’s order will be carried out.
 
"As far as I'm aware, that process was still chugging along," he told the Sunday Independent.
 
An unlikely supporter for the Kelly family’s cause is Mick Kennedy, Mansfield policeman and great-grandson of Sergeant Michael Kennedy, who was killed by Kelly in 1878.
 
"Surely he has got the right to be buried in peace; to rest in peace where his family decide, not where some developer decides where he should rest," Kennedy told The Age.

Most of his contemporaries thought he was a blackguard, but his descendants take a more nuanced view. That's the fate of Ned Kelly, cold blooded killer or freedom fighting folk hero, depending on who you ask.

Ned Kelly, notorious bushranger from the 1870s, will finally be laid to rest alongside his family after 130 years. Kelly’s remains were found in an prisoner’s grave this past September in Australia.

Relatives of the former Australian-Irish outlaw Ned Kelly have reacted with anger over proposals to put his bones on public display.

Irish Australian outlaw Ned Kelly’s remains have finally been identified – and a Melbourne jail skull from his death mask exposed as a fraud.

Researchers have discovered that people with tattoos of the Irish gangster Ned Kelly are eight times more likely to be murdered, commit suicide or die by accident.

An Australian farmer has handed over a skull which he says belongs to the legendary Irish bushranger Ned Kelly (no relation!)