Australia - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1833: 375 Lashes and Still Running: The Convict Hanged at Hobart After One Final Burglary

Thomas Ansell was transported from London for petty larceny, but Van Diemen’s Land turned him into one of its most punished prisoners. In barely two years on road gangs he was flogged with 375 lashes for absconding, insolence and neglect, his sentence stretched again and again, and his body became so densely marked with tattoos, a sun, a moon, a mermaid, hearts and darts, that authorities used the ink to identify him on runaway notices circulated as far as London.

None of it stopped him. Ansell fell in with a bushranging gang operating near New Norfolk, breaking into the home of Robert and Mary Hatch and stealing what he could carry. Caught and convicted of burglary, he was hanged in front of the gaol at Hobart on 1 November 1833, aged twenty-four.

Convict flogging punishment scene in Tasmania

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Australia Burglary Execution Hobart Prison TAS Theft

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1986: Jealousy Sealed the Fate of the another Victim in the Birnie Killings Near Fremantle

Noelene Patterson had run out of petrol on Canning Highway near Fremantle when David and Catherine Birnie pulled over, on this day in 1986, and offered her a lift, only to force her into their car. She was held captive for three days, one of several women the couple had already taken that year in a string of killings that had gone unsolved by police.

Unlike their other victims, David Birnie seemed to grow fond of Patterson, allowing her small comforts and talk of letting her go, a softness that stirred his wife’s jealousy. According to accounts of the killings, Catherine Birnie’s resentment decided the outcome: David forced sleeping pills down Patterson’s throat and strangled her, then buried her body in bushland outside the city.

Kidnap concept word written on a blackboard background

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Abduction Australia Fremantle Kidnapping Murder Perth Serial Killer WA

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1993: The Backpacker Who Got Away: How One Survivor Unmasked Serial Killer Ivan Milat

A British backpacker named Paul Onions was hitchhiking along the Hume Highway near Sydney in January 1990 when a driver calling himself “Bill” produced a revolver and a coil of rope. Onions fled on foot and flagged down a passing motorist, reporting the attack to police before the driver vanished.

On this day in 1993, searchers combing a forest south of Sydney found two more bodies bearing the same spinal injuries as an earlier pair of backpackers unearthed the previous year, confirming Australia had a serial killer stalking the highway. The month long search that followed ended with the discovery of a German backpacker nearby, the fifth victim linked to the same killer.

Reading UK news reports of the discoveries two years later, Onions recognised the description of his own ordeal and contacted the Australian embassy. His account and photo identification of the man who had attacked him led police to Ivan Milat, whose home was searched and who was eventually convicted of the backpacker murders.

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Australia Kidnapping Murder NSW Police Serial Killer Sydney Trial

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1851: A Fabricated Choking Bullock Led to the Murder of a Sleeping Man: Hanged at Launceston

Francis Duke, a servant on George Hill’s farm near Deloraine in northern Tasmania, woke his employer in the middle of the night with an urgent story: the bullock being fattened was choking and needed help. When they reached the shed the animal was calm and Duke complained only of the cold, but as Hill turned back toward the house Duke knocked him down with a piece of firewood and began stabbing him as the two men grappled on the ground. It was Hill’s wife who turned the fight, beating Duke with a brick until neighbours arrived to help subdue him.

Searching the property afterwards, they found Duke’s fellow servant, a ticket-of-leave man named William Smith, already dead in his bed, a wound driven more than an inch into his skull while he slept. Duke was convicted of murder and sentenced to death without hope of mercy. He was hanged at Launceston on 31 October 1851.

Duke, a Spaniard who reportedly spoke unintelligibly in court, insisted to the end that the evidence given by Hill and his wife was false from beginning to end.

Old Launceston Gaol, viewed from Wellington Square. State Library and Archives of Tasmania, LPIC147/4/62.

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Australia Deloraine Execution Launceston Murder TAS Trial

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