1811: No Reprieve: The Killers Confession Ignored as a Convicted Man Is Hanged Two Days Late
John Dunn was convicted at the Parramatta Court of Criminal Jurisdiction of murdering Mary Rowe, largely on the testimony of a sixteen year old accomplice, John Welch, whose evidence also saw Welch’s father, Thomas Welch, convicted as an accessory after the fact. Dunn was due to hang at Parramatta two days beforehand, on Monday 16 September 1811, but as the execution was about to proceed the boy, John Welch, suddenly retracted everything he had sworn at trial. Read more →
1826: Nine Hanged in a Single Day at Hobart, All for Sheep Stealing and Burglary
On September 18, 1826, nine convicts went to the gallows together in Hobart under Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur’s ruthless enforcement of Britain’s Bloody Code, the doctrine that made property crime a capital offence equal to murder. Read more →
1975: The Hunt Ends: Patty Hearst, Newspaper Heiress Turned Fugitive, Captured by the FBI
Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was abducted from her Berkeley apartment in February 1974 by the self-styled Symbionese Liberation Army, a small but violent radical cell. Read more →
