QLD - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1892: A Mutilated Body in a Trunk: Sailor Hanged in Brisbane for Murder at Sea

Leonardo Moncado was a Chilean sailor aboard the trading schooner Sketty Belle when he killed a young cabin hand known as Bob during a voyage off Thursday Island. No trace of the victim was ever found except a mutilated portion of his body, discovered stuffed inside Moncado's own trunk. One crewman who witnessed the victimes final moments stayed silent for months, having been threatened by Moncado, and only told police the truth once Moncado was committed for trial.

Moncado was convicted of murder and hanged in Brisbane on this day in 1892, attended on the scaffold by a Catholic priest.

Leonardo Moncado in custody: Queensland State Archives, Item ID ITM2947

⬅ See all events from 24 October

Australia Brisbane Execution Murder QLD Thursday Island Trial

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1893: Spurned, He Killed Her With an Axe and Tried to Burn Away the Evidence: Hanged in Brisbane

George Blantern asked the young domestic servant Flora Macdonald to marry him. When she refused, he crept into her room at Marlborough Station near Rockhampton on 7 May 1893 and struck her repeatedly with an axe as she slept, then set her bed alight in a failed attempt to hide the crime. Within hours he confessed to the arresting constable: "I killed her. I don't know what possessed me to do it. I must not have been in my right senses when I did."

Convicted of murder, Blantern read a lengthy statement to the court blaming drink, jealousy and an old head injury for his "awful crime" before sentence was passed. He was hanged in Brisbane on this day in 1893, walking to the gallows steadily and showing no emotion until the cap was placed over his head.

He went to his death expressing penitence, ending his final words with "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit."

George Blantern: Queensland State Archives, Item ID ITM2947

⬅ See all events from 23 October

Arson Australia Brisbane Execution Murder QLD Rockhampton Trial

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1861: Without Seeking Permission: the Settler Camp Behind the Cullin-la-Ringo Massacre

In October 1861 the politician Horatio Wills led an enormous settler train, more than 10,000 sheep and a line of bullock wagons, onto Gayiri land in Central Queensland to establish a cattle station at Cullin-la-ringo, without seeking permission from the people whose country it was. Tensions were already high: a neighbouring squatter had wrongly accused Gayiri men of stealing cattle and had several killed over it.

On 17 October, Aboriginal people who had been passing through the camp all day attacked, killing nineteen of the twenty-five settlers present, including Wills himself. Only a handful escaped, among them his teenage son Tom Wills, later a celebrated cricketer and co-founder of Australian rules football.

The arrival of the neighbouring squatters and Mon collecting and burying the dead. By T.G.Moyle: 1861

⬅ See all events from 17 October

Australia Central Queensland Colonial History Frontier Conflict Massacre QLD Reprisal Killings

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1883: A Father Who Watched Him Hang: James Gardiner Executed at Brisbane for Killing German Ada

James Gardiner, a 19-year-old cabman, lived off the earnings of a woman known as German Ada in a Rockhampton brothel. On the night of 21 August 1883 a drunken quarrel turned fatal: he kicked and stamped her to death. Police tried to suppress the story, closing the inquest to reporters, but a neighbour who had heard her screams and been waved off by a constable made sure it got out anyway.

Gardiner was sentenced to death by Justice Pring and hanged at Brisbane Gaol alongside two other condemned men. Among those at the gate stood Charles Muller, an elderly German man and father of the dead woman, whose real name was Matilda. He had asked to watch his daughter's killer die, stood opposite the scaffold through the execution, then pushed forward to view the body and walked away looking, witnesses said, satisfied.

Gardiner never denied killing her, pleading only that he had been drunk, and spent his last days exhorting the two men hanged beside him to repent.

Elderly man with long beard isolated on white background

⬅ See all events from 15 October

Australia Brisbane Domestic Violence Execution Murder QLD Rockhampton Trial

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