in an interview with the Australian Coalition Against Death Penalty (ACADP), Opas said: "I want to put the record straight. I want the truth told about Ronald Ryan – that an innocent man went to the gallows. I want the truth to be made available to everyone, for anyone young and old, who may want to do research into Ryan's case or research on the issue of capital punishment. I will go to my grave firmly of the opinion that Ronald Ryan did not commit murder. I refuse to believe that at any time he told anyone that he did". On 23 August 2008, Philip Opas QC, died after a long illness at the age of 91. Opas maintained Ryan's innocence to the end. Opas asked Australian Coalition President Dorina Lisson to keep fighting to clear Ryan's name. According to Ms Lisson, she and others are determined to have Ryan's murder conviction overturned because there is no scientific ballistic forensic evidence to prove Ryan guilty of murder, that a wrongly convicted man was hanged based solely on unsigned unrecorded unproven "hearsay" allegations of verbals/confessions. For 35 years, Barry Jones, who was a member of both the Victorian and Federal Parliaments refused to comment publicly on Ryan's hanging. Mr Jones broke his silence in 2002 at the launch of Mike Richards' book, The Hanged Man. Mr Jones says he remains "unsure" of whether Ryan ever pulled the trigger. "It seemed to me that there was probably a reasonable doubt in the case," he said. Mr Jones, also the former secretary of the Victorian Anti-Hanging Committee says he believes Ryan's hanging was an attempt by then Victorian Premier Henry Bolte, to push his law and order agenda. Justice Starke, the judge at Ryan's trial and a committed abolitionist, was convinced of Ryan's guilt but did not personally think that he should hang. Until his death in 1992, Starke remained troubled about Ryan's hanging and would often ask his colleagues if they thought he did the right thing. Philip Opas' junior in the trial, Brian Bourke, was filmed in 2005 saying: ″One of the problems of Ryan's trial was an alleged admission that he made on the plane back to the homicide fellows. That sort of thing can't happen now, because they've got to be recorded on tape, but whether he made the admission or was verballed, I don't know. He was a