On the evening of 3 September 2009, millionaire businessman Michael McGurk was shot dead in the driveway of his home in Cremorne, Sydney. His young son witnessed the killing. McGurk had been embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with property developer Ron Medich over a failed business deal.
The murder triggered one of the most complex organised crime investigations in New South Wales in years. Ron Medich was ultimately convicted in 2019 of arranging the killing, and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison.
On Father’s Day, 2 September 1984, a heavily armed convoy of Comanchero motorcycle club members descended on the Viking Tavern car park in Milperra, a south-western suburb of Sydney.
The Comancheros had been at war with the newly formed Bandidos, a breakaway chapter, whose split from the Comancheros founder had curdled into open conflict. When both clubs converged on a swap meet that day, gunfire erupted in the car park. Seven people died, including a 14-year-old girl caught in the crossfire, and twenty-eight others were wounded.
The Milperra Massacre became the bloodiest single clash in the history of Australian outlaw motorcycle clubs.
On 1 September 1830, the notorious Irish-born bushranger Jack Donahue, known as one of the Wild Colonial Boys, was shot dead during a confrontation between his gang and mounted police near Bringelly, New South Wales. A party of eight closed to within a hundred yards of Donahue and friends undetected. When the bushrangers spotted them, Donahue pulled off his hat and defied the officers: ‘Come on, you cowardly rascals, we are ready, if there’s a dozen of you.’ After a standoff of nearly half an hour, shots were exchanged. A carbine ball and pistol ball fired by a mounted trooper struck Donahue in the left temple and neck, killing him instantly.
An inquest was held the following day at the Fox and Hounds Bar in Sydney, with his death being ruled justifiable homicide.
Donahue had been one of the most wanted men in the colony for five years as the figurehead of the Wild Colonial Boys. His death ended one of the most romanticised outlaw careers in early Australian history.
Drawing of the body of bushranger Jack Donahoe, c.1830. Attributed to Thomas Mitchell. Lithograph. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Public domain.
For months in 1985, Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, terrorised California, breaking into homes while families slept to assault, mutilate, and murder. His reign of terror ended not with a police operation but with a newspaper front page: once his mugshot was published across California media, his anonymity was gone.
On 31 August 1985, Ramirez attempted to carjack vehicles in the Boyle Heights neighbourhood of East Los Angeles. Residents recognised him, chased him down the sreet, and beat him to the ground before police arrived to take him into custody. Facing the mob, Ramirez reportedly confessed to officers, preferring arrest to the alternative.
