John Wayne Glover, later known as the Granny Killer, followed 86-year-old Doris Cox along Spit Road in Sydney‘s Mosman to her retirement village in 1989, then dragged her into a secluded stairwell and smashed her face into a brick wall.
Cox survived, one of the few to live through an attack that would later be linked to a string of killings targeting elderly women. But she had Alzheimer’s, and her account of the assault was so confused that detectives were steered toward hunting a much younger suspect, a misdirection that bought Glover more time before he was finally caught.
In memory note on paper held in wrinkled hands under dramatic light
In 1979, Philadelphia police searching Ira Einhorn’s apartment found a locked steamer trunk shoved into a closet; inside were the mummified remains of his former girlfriend, Holly Maddux, missing for more than a year. Einhorn, a charismatic countercultural figure known as the Unicorn Killer, fled the country before trial and spent nearly two decades hiding in Europe before he was finally captured in France.
Extradited to the United States, Einhorn stood trial in 2002 and took the stand in his own defense, insisting CIA agents had killed Maddux and framed him. The jury took just two hours to convict him of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced the following day to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Vintage steamer trunk with secrets locked up tight.
Young Edward Dunn vanished near his family’s farm at Port Gregory, north of Champion Bay in Western Australia in October 1865. Search parties tracked his footprints for a short distance before they disappeared, and no trace of him surfaced until the following April, when fragments of clothing, a skull and other remains were pulled from a well.
The mystery stood unsolved until 1873, when one of the accused broke down in a Geraldton lock-up and told police what had happened: a group of men had come across Dunn, killed him, then cooked and ate portions of his body before hiding his remains down the well. Two men were convicted of murder, admitted their guilt, and were hanged at Perth Gaol on this date, eight years after the killing.
When civil engineer Peter Sherlock vanished in July 1889, his landlord Robert Landells claimed he had gone up country looking for work. About a month later, Sherlock’s body was discovered beneath branches near Ringwood, outside Melbourne, with a fractured skull and devastating gunshot injuries to his face.
Landells told the inquest Sherlock had been broke and depressed, a man likely to have taken his own life. Detectives found otherwise: Sherlock held 200 pounds in securities, and after his disappearance Landells had cashed his cheques and sold his gun to a grazier near Beaufort. Confronted, Landells confessed to shooting Sherlock while passing the loaded gun between them, insisting it was an accident, then panicking and burying the body. A jury did not believe him, and he was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 16 October 1889 in an execution so botched the rope nearly severed his head.
Landells kept to his story of an accident to the end, refusing calls to confess. When the sheriff asked on the scaffold whether he had anything to say, he replied only, “No, sir.”
Sketch of Ringwood mystery crime scene near Dandenong Creek 1889
