Murder at the Lion Villa: A case of domestic violence at Mylor, South Australia, in 1934, and the manhunt for William Arthur Figg

In December 1934, the murdered bodies of Dora Figg and her four young children were discovered in their beds in a house known as the Lion Villa in Mylor, a small town in the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. Missing from the crime scene was local woodcutter and champion axeman William Arthur Figg, the husband of Dora and father of the four children, who was last seen riding his bicycle into the rugged bushland near Mylor. This article examines the story behind the Figg murders and the intense manhunt for the chief suspect, William Figg, which took place across Australia during the later years of the Great Depression. An analysis of the Figg murders reveals intersecting themes of domestic violence, mental illness and unemployment; issues that remain relevant to many Australians in the present, but are explored in this paper within a regional context in early twentieth-century South Australia.