2003: Melbourne Gangland Victim Found Executed with His Partner in Their Own Home

Istvan ‘Steve’ Gulyas ran a dating agency out of Sunbury, on the outskirts of Melbourne, that police suspected was really a front for a brothel. He was also a friend of Nik Radev, a standover figure already gunned down in the city’s escalating underworld war.

That connection made Gulyas a marked man. On 20 October 2003 he and his de facto wife were found shot dead inside their home, both killed in what police treated as a deliberate execution rather than a robbery gone wrong.

The case became one of several unsolved or unresolved killings tied to the broader Melbourne gangland conflict of the late 1990s and 2000s, with no one ever convicted over the double murder.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.
Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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1977: The Hillside Stranglers Claim Their First Victim in Los Angeles

Nineteen-year-old Yolanda Washington was last seen getting into a car near a Los Angeles intersection one October evening in 1977. The next morning her body was found on a hillside near the Ventura Freeway, the first known victim of the killers soon dubbed the Hillside Stranglers.

Her killers were cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who had lured her with the promise of a ride before attacking and strangling her. Washington, who worked as a waitress and sometimes turned to sex work, was the opening victim in a killing spree that would terrorise the city for months before the cousins were finally caught.

Aerial view of rush hour traffic on the 101 Ventura Freeway
Hillside Strangler: Aerial view of rush hour traffic on the 101 Ventura Freeway

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1854: An Acquittal Sparks a Riot: Ten Thousand Miners Burn the Eureka Hotel at Ballarat

When the men accused of killing miner James Scobie walked free, the goldfields of Ballarat erupted. Roughly ten thousand miners massed near the Eureka Hotel, the pub where Scobie had been beaten to death, convinced the verdict was a stitch-up between the publican and the authorities.

The crowd set the hotel ablaze and turned on the officials sent to calm them: Gold Commissioner Rede was pelted with eggs as police and soldiers failed to restore order. The riot was a direct spark for the unrest that would culminate weeks later in the Eureka Stockade, one of the defining clashes of Australian colonial history.

Burning of Bentleys Hotel during the Eureka Riot 1854
Burning of Bentleys Hotel during the Eureka Riot 1854

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1859: The First White Man Hanged in Perth for Killing an Aboriginal Man

Richard Bibby was a hutkeeper at a station in the Victoria district when he decided to kill Billamarra, an Aboriginal man camped near his own hut, so near that he was said to be under Bibby’s protection. He announced his intention the night before, loaded his pistol, and before dawn woke his sleeping victim only to shoot him dead. Bibby claimed Billamarra had stolen lambs, but witnesses showed the missing lambs had simply been mauled by native dogs; another man watching in secret saw the whole killing.

Tried and condemned at the Quarter Sessions, Bibby became the first white man executed in Perth, and in the colony, for murdering an Aboriginal person. Strong appeals were made for mercy, but his cold, premeditated planning and a past conviction for robbery with violence counted against him. The hanging itself was botched, the rope poorly adjusted, and he struggled visibly on the rope before dying.

Bibby privately confessed his guilt to the prison chaplain, yet on the scaffold, asked if his sentence was just, he answered that if the truth had been told he would not have been there.

Disused shed with kiln and chimney stack in dry Australian bush
Disused shed with kiln and chimney stack in dry Australian bush

⬅ See all events from 17 October

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On This Day in True Crime History

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