Old Melbourne Gaol, Victorian Forensic Medicine via Reuters, file

A combination image shows an undated photograph of Ned Kelly, and a picture of his headless remains taken by the Victorian Forensic Medicine on Sept. 1, 2011.

SYDNEY — The remains of Australia's most famous outlaw, Ned Kelly, are finally to be laid to rest, 132 years after he was hanged for murder.

Kelly's descendants, who received his remains after they were exhumed from a mass prison grave, said on Wednesday they would hold a private church memorial service on Friday before the burial in an unmarked grave on Sunday.

The homemade armor and helmet Kelly wore during his last violent shootout with police and his reported final words before he was hanged in Melbourne jail on Nov. 11, 1880 — "such is life" — helped make him an iconic figure in Australian history.

His family, the Kelly Gang, became a symbol for social tensions between poor Irish settlers and the wealthy establishment at the time, and Kelly himself became a folk hero to many for standing up to the Anglo-Australian ruling class.

'Dignified funeral'
Kelly's descendants said the private farewells were in keeping with the outlaw's requests.

"The descendants of the Kelly family wish to give effect to Ned Kelly's last wish and that he now be buried in consecrated ground with only his family in attendance in order to ensure a private, respectful and dignified funeral," the family said in a statement.

"The family wish for their privacy to be respected so that they may farewell a very much loved member of their family,” they added.

One Australian media outlet reported that Kelly will be buried at Greta, near Glenrowan, north-east of Victoria, where his mother is buried in an unmarked grave.

Kelly's remains have made a circuitous journey to their final resting place.

They were first buried in a mass grave at Melbourne jail. When that closed in 1929, Kelly's bones were exhumed and reburied in another mass grave at the newer Pentridge Prison.

All the bones buried in Pentridge yard were exhumed in 2009 and Kelly's skeleton was positively identified in 2011 by scientists after DNA tests against a descendant. The Victoria state government said in August it would return the skeleton to the family.

Kelly's skull remains missing. It was believed to have been separated from his skeleton during the transfer.

His life story inspired the novel "True History of the Kelly Gang" by author Peter Carey, which won the 2001 Booker Prize, and the late actor Heath Ledger played him in a 2003 movie.

Related stories:

Ned Kelly's remains found -- but his head is still missing

Full Australia coverage from NBC News

Stringer/Austria / Reuters

The tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler's parents, Alois and Klara Hitler, was removed from an Austrian cemetery this week to deter neo-Nazi commemorations of the German dictator.

VIENNA -- The tombstone marking the grave of Adolf Hitler's parents, a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis, has been removed from an upper Austrian village cemetery at the request of a descendant, and the grave is now available to receive new mortal remains, officials said Friday.

Walter Brunner, mayor of Leonding village, said the stone with the faded black and white portrait photos of Alois and Klara Hitler was taken down Wednesday. Village priest Kurt Pitterschatscher said the rented grave was ready for a new lease.

Asked whether he would have trouble persuading people to let their loved ones share a grave with the parents of a man whose name is a universal epitome of evil, Pitterschatscher said, "I really haven't thought about it."

Pitterschatscher said the black marble marker was removed without ceremony by a stonemason hired by the relative, described as an elderly female descendant of Alois Hitler's first wife, Anna. What's left at the site is a white gravel square and a tree.

He said he did not know the woman personally and did not identify her by name but cited her request for termination of the grave lease as saying she was too old to care for it and tired of it "being used for manifestations of sympathy" for Hitler.

Flowers, wreaths from admirers
Hitler's roots are in Braunau, near Leonding, which is commonly identified as his hometown after the village that he was born in was incorporated into Braunau in 1938. But he and his family moved to Leonding in 1898 when he was 9 and lived there until age 15.

Leonding itself first assumed cult status for his followers after Hitler visited his parents' grave and the nearby family house following the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

The house now warehouses coffins for the cemetery, and Brunner said in a telephone interview that — unlike the more than 100-year-old grave — it did not draw Hitler fans.

Jews protest Hitler shampoo ad in Turkey

Anti-extremist groups say neo-Nazis, sometimes coming in groups, placed flowers and Nazi symbols on the grave.

Robert Eiter, with the Upper Austrian Network Against Racism and Right-Extremism, said the latest incident was on All Saints day, Nov. 1, when an urn was left with the inscription "UnvergeSSlich" — German for "unforgettable" and alluding to Hitler's SS shock troops.

"A lot of flowers and wreaths were deposited there from people who clearly were admirers," he said. "It had to do with the son and not the parents."

Brunner, the mayor, said he was "happy with the decision," and Eiter said most Leonding residents also supported it.

Austria has moved from its postwar portrayal of being Nazi Germany's first victim to acknowledging that it was Hitler's willing partner. Most young Austrians reject Nazi ideology and condemn the part their parents might have played in the Holocaust.

At the same time, the rightist-populist Freedom Party — whose supporters range from those disillusioned with more traditional parties to Islamophobes and Holocaust-deniers — has become Austria's second-strongest political force.

An Anti-Defamation League survey taken this year and published last week said that — while remaining high — anti-Semitic attitudes decreased from 30 percent to 28 percent in Austria last year compared to 2009.

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