Ned Kelly was executed on 11 November 1880, and his body buried in the grounds of Melbourne Gaol. In 1929, his remains, together with those of other prisoners, were transferred from Old Melbourne Gaol to Pentridge Prison. On 20 January 2013, Ned Kelly’s remains were finally laid to rest in the cemetery at Greta in northeast Victoria. His coffin was buried deep in an unmarked grave, surrounded by several mounds and encased in concrete to prevent looting.

In 2009, a Western Australian farmer handed a skull believed to be that of Ned Kelly to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine for identification. This led to efforts to identify Kelly’s remains from those exhumed from Pentridge Prison. In September 2011, Kelly’s remains were formally identified, but DNA testing found that the skull was not Kelly’s.

The Australian film industry produced what was probably the world’s first full-length feature film in 1906 – the Tait Brothers’ production The Story of the Kelly Gang. Footage from this film can be seen at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.

A number of films have been made about Ned Kelly, including Ned Kelly (1970) starring Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger as Ned; the Trial of Ned Kelly (1977) starring John Watters and Gerard Kennedy; the 1980 mini-series The Last Outlaw, starring John Jarrett, Steve Bisley and Sigrid Thornton; and the 2003 film Ned Kelly starring Heath Ledger.

Australian author Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize for his novel True History of the Kelly Gang, which was inspired in part by the Sidney Nolan series of Kelly paintings. The novel’s first-person narrative style was inspired by Kelly’s ‘Jerilderie Letter’.

On his arrest, Kelly was initially charged with the murders of Constables Lonigan and Scanlon. However, due to inconsistencies in the evidence and the desire of the judge, Sir Redmond Barry, to wrap the case up quickly, the crown case against Kelly was stripped down to a single charge: the murder of Constable Lonigan.