Editing Ned Kelly (section)

===Murder of Aaron Sherritt===
{{Blockquote|text=... I look upon Ned Kelly as an extraordinary man; there is no man in the world like him, he is superhuman.|sign=[[Aaron Sherritt]] to Superintendent [[Francis Augustus Hare]]{{sfn|Jones|2010|p=}}}}
[[File:Aaron Sherritt 2.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait of Sherritt showing his "larrikin heel" and wearing his hat in the Greta mob fashion with the chin strap resting under his nose]]
During the Kelly outbreak, police watch parties monitored Byrne's mother's house in the Woolshed Valley near [[Beechworth]]. The police used the house of her neighbour, [[Aaron Sherritt]], as a base of operations and kept watch from nearby caves at night. Sherritt, a former Greta Mob member and lifelong friend of Byrne, accepted police payments for camping with the watch parties and for informing on the gang.{{sfn|Jones|1995|pp=205-206}} Detective [[Michael Edward Ward|Michael Ward]] doubted Sherritt's value as an informer, suspecting he lied to the police to protect Byrne.{{sfn|Kelson|McQuilton|2001|p=128}}{{sfn|Jones|1995|p=205}}

In March 1879 Byrne's mother saw Sherritt with a police watch party and later publicly denounced him as a spy.{{Sfn|McQuilton|1987|p=122}}{{sfn|Jones|1995|p=206}} In the following months, Byrne and Ned sent invitations to Sherritt to join the gang, but when he continued his relationship with the police, the outlaws decided to murder him as a means to launch a grander plot, one that they boasted would "astonish not only the Australian colonies but the whole world".{{sfn|Farwell|1970|p=193}}

[[File:MurderOfSherritt.jpg|thumb|left|Sherritt's murder]]
On 26 June 1880, Dan and Byrne rode into the Woolshed Valley. That evening, they kidnapped a local gardener, Anton Wick, and took him to Sherritt's hut, which was occupied by Sherritt, his pregnant wife Ellen and her mother, and a four-man police watch party.{{Sfn|Kieza|2017|pp=390–92}}

Byrne forced Wick to knock on the back door and call out for Sherritt. When Sherritt answered the door, Byrne shot him in the throat and chest with a shotgun, killing him. Byrne and Dan then entered the hut while the policemen hid in one of the bedrooms. Byrne overheard them scrambling for their shotguns and demanded that they come out. When they did not respond he fired into the bedroom. He then sent Ellen into the bedroom to bring the police out, but they detained her in the room.{{Sfn|Jones|1995|pp=230–231}}

The outlaws left the hut, collected kindling, and loudly threatened to burn alive those inside. They stayed outside for approximately two hours, yelled more threats, then released Wick and rode away.{{sfn|Kieza|2017|pp=392–93}}{{Sfn|Morrissey|2015|pp=122–23}}