The headless remains of Australia's most infamous criminal, Ned Kelly, have been identified, officials said. This has ended a decade-long mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the folk hero's body.

Kelly had led a gang of bank robbers in Australia's southern Victoria state in the 19th century. He was hanged in 1880. His final resting place was unknown. These days, he is considered by many Australians to be something of a Robin Hood.

Considered by some to be a cold-blooded murderer, Kelly was also seen as a folk hero and a symbol of Irish-Australian defiance against the British authorities.

After killing three policemen, the outlaw was captured in the state of Victoria in 1880 and hanged for murder at Old Melbourne Gaol in November of the same year. But his body went missing after it was thrown into a mass grave.

Officials pinpointed the location of the grave site in 2008 and later exhumed the bodies for analysis. A DNA sample from one of Kelly's descendants confirmed that one of the skeletons, which missed most of its skull, was that of the notorious Ned.

Believed to have been born in 1854 or 1855, Kelly became an outlaw two years before he was hanged, taking on corrupt police and greedy land barons.

Over the next 18 months, the Kelly Gang held up country towns and robbed their banks, becoming folk heroes to the masses.

In a final gunbattle at Glenrowan, three of the gang members died and Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armor and helmet, was wounded and arrested.

According to local reports, the bullet wounds he suffered to his elbow, thigh and foot are still noticeable in the skeletal remains.

Kelly's story has been documented in several books and movies, including a film starring the Rolling Stones front-man, Mick Jagger, and another starring the late actor, Heath Ledger. A popular novel is True History of the Kelly Gang written by Australian writer Peter Carey. It won the 2001 Man Booker Prize. Despite its title, the book is fiction and a variation on the Ned Kelly story.

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