Richard Copping was jealous that his sweetheart, Susannah Stacey, had grown tired of him. On 12 May 1878 he followed her into her parents’ home near Sorell, in Tasmania’s south, and split her skull with an axe as she tried to shut a door against him. When her father ran out and accused him, Copping only clapped his hands and said, “Yes, I know I have,” before declaring, “She deceived me, and I’ll be hung for her like a man.”
He then tried to shoot himself, loading a gun with nails after finding no shot, and botched even that, surviving with a shattered jaw. His lawyer argued he was suffering from a diseased brain, but the jury convicted him, and he was hanged at Hobart’s Campbell Street Gaol on 20 October 1878, sobbing and unnerved on the gallows.
Copping never denied the killing, having confessed within minutes of the attack, and he reportedly left written confessions in the sheriff’s keeping before he died.
