However, in 1864 whilst in the dock at the Sydney Criminal Court in Darlinghurst Frank Gardiner had pleaded Guilty to the charge of Highway Robbery of Horsington and Hewitt and took umbrage at the evidence put forward by his victims whereby in a letter to the judge, Chief Justice Alfred Stephen, Gardiner indicated that those in attendance on the day in question had cast doubt over the participants claiming in fact that there were five in number and that since the events only two of the bushrangers involved remained alive. By the time of the trial in 1864 Pat M'Guinness had been shot dead, John O'Meally also shot dead and John Davis unmentioned previously who at the time was close to Gardiner was serving a fifteen-year sentence. Whether by design
