User:L.P.Costello

Michael Francis Costello
Michael Francis Costello (1895 - 1936) was a prominent business man in the township of Innisfail, Queensland Australia who is noted as a victim of the Herbert Kopit Train Murder of 1936.

Birth
Michael Costello was born in circa. 1895 in County Mayo, Ireland. He migrated to Australia as a young boy in 1898.

Marriage
Michael Costello married Mary Violet Fitzgerald in 1923 at the Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church, Innisfail. Mary gave birth to four children; Kevin (b. 1925), Francis (1927 - 1984), Patrick (1930 - 1994) and John (1934 - 1981).

Death
On April the 4th of January 1936, Costello boarded a train from Cairns to visit his mother, Margaret Costello, who resided in Brisbane. On the evening of April 6, 1936, while Costello was resting in his compartment, 23 year old Herbert Kopit, a laborer of Egyptian and Australian background, murdered Costello using a crow bar. Kopit was sentenced to life imprisonment after being captured in Melbourne in early 1937. He died in prison in 1951.