NSW - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1829: John Holmes Hanged for Arson at Campbelltown

John Holmes was convicted of maliciously setting fire to a barn belonging to James Benn at Campbell Town on 29 May 1829, with intent to injure and defraud the owner. The jury returned a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death was passed.

Holmes was executed at Campbelltown on 21 August 1829. On the scaffold, Reverend Mr. Therry sought and received permission to address the assembled crowd, relaying the condemned man’s confession before Holmes himself spoke, earnestly urging spectators to take warning from his fate and avoid the bad company that had brought him to his end.

Holmes acknowledged his guilt and the justice of his sentence, expressing hope that God had forgiven him as he freely forgave all who had wronged him.

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Arson Australia Campbelltown Execution NSW Sydney Trial

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1786: Britain Decides to Dump Its Criminal Class on the Far Side of the World

In 1786, Britain faced a crisis of its own making. Decades of the so-called bloody code had swollen the criminal class with petty offenders, American independence had slammed shut the old dumping ground of the colonial plantations, and the gaols were bursting. The solution settled upon was audacious: ship Britain’s unwanted more than 15,000 miles to New South Wales, a coastline only recently mapped by Captain Cook, who had praised the land around Botany Bay.

Over the next 80 years, more than 160,000 men and women were transported to Australia and Van Diemen’s Land. Transportation meant total erasure: the loss of home, family, and identity, followed by a brutal sea crossing and survival in an utterly foreign land. Yet for many, the far side of the world offered something the old country never would: a second chance.

First Fleet ships entering Sydney Harbour 1788 illustration

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Australia Colonial History England NSW Organised Crime Political Crime Prison Transportation UK

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1932: William Cyril Moxley Hanged at Long Bay for a Double Murder in Moorebank

On 5 April 1932, Dorothy Ruth Denzel and Frank Barnby Wilkinson, a young couple soon to be engaged, were attacked and killed while resting on a rug in a darkened lane near Liverpool, NSW. Their killer, William Cyril Moxley, a police informer with a criminal record, fled the scene in Wilkinson’s red Alvis sports car, later found abandoned in Ashfield. Moxley was identified in part by a distinctive detail: a clean bullet hole through his left ear, a souvenir from criminals he had once informed on.

A massive manhunt followed, with more than a hundred police deployed and families in surrounding suburbs locking their homes at night. Moxley was eventually tracked to bushland at Frenchs Forest in Sydney. He tried to escape, but after a chase and struggle involving three police officers, he was overpowered and arrested. He was hanged at Long Bay Gaol on 17 August 1932.

William Cyril Moxley condemned murderer at Long Bay gallows 1932

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Australia Execution Murder NSW Sydney Trial

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1893: Baby Farmer John Makin Hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol

John Makin and his wife Sarah were convicted of murdering infants left in their care in one of the most notorious baby farming cases in the history of Sydney. The couple had accepted children for informal adoption and killed them for profit, burying the small bodies around their properties.

Makin was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 15 August 1893, precisely at 9 o’clock. When asked if he had anything to say on the scaffold, Makin simply muttered ‘No.’ Hangman Howard adjusted the noose with care, the lever was pulled, and death was instantaneous.

The night before his execution, Makin wrote a statement he claimed related to the child Amber Murray, for whose death he had been convicted. The statement maintained he had been convicted for the wrong child entirely.

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Australia Darlinghurst Execution Murder NSW Sydney Trial

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