Trial - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1861: Hanged Where They Killed: Two Men Executed for the Murder of a Shepherd in Colonial South Australia

In September 1861, two men were tried and executed for the murder of a shepherd, Theodore Gustavus Burggoist, near Fowler’s Bay in South Australia.

Before their execution, the two men acknowledged their guilt. Officials erected the gallows on the exact spot where the killing had taken place, guided there by the two men themselves, who calmly pointed out the bush where the shepherd had been sitting, the place where he was attacked as he tried to flee, and the spot where he later died of his wound.

Members of the community gathered to witness the execution, alongside the local station owner, the ship’s captain who had carried the official party, and several station hands. When it came time to take the bodies down, onlookers fled in evident terror, refusing to help remove them. The two men were buried at the site of the execution, laid to rest beneath the very ground where the shepherd had died.

⬅ See all events from 7 September

Australia Colonial History Execution Frontier Justice Murder SA Trial

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1998: The Forged Will That Exposed Britain’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Doctor Harold Shipman

Harold Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998 after police investigated the death of his patient Kathleen Grundy, who had left him £386,000 in a will that turned out to be forged. The clumsy fake unravelled quickly: a Brother typewriter matching the one used to produce the document was found in Shipman’s possession, and Grundy’s own family, alarmed that their mother would never have cut them out, had already raised suspicions with a solicitor.

The arrest opened the door to a far larger inquiry. Detectives uncovered a pattern of lethal diamorphine injections administered to elderly patients under his care, alongside falsified medical records designed to make the deaths look natural.

Shipman was eventually linked to the deaths of at least 215 patients over more than two decades, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in British history.

Last will and testament typed on aged paper with vintage typewriter

⬅ See all events from 7 September

Fraud Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial UK

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1901: Leon Czolgosz Shoots President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot twice in the abdomen while shaking hands with the public at the Temple of Music during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. His attacker, 28-year-old Leon Czolgosz, was an anarchist who had lost his job in the Panic of 1893 and come to regard McKinley as a symbol of oppression. Despite appearing to recover initially, McKinley died on September 14 from gangrene caused by his wounds, becoming the third American president assassinated after Abraham Lincoln and James A. Garfield.

Czolgosz was convicted of first-degree murder within a month and executed by electric chair on October 29, 1901. McKinley was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. In the aftermath, Congress formally charged the Secret Service with protecting the president.

⬅ See all events from 6 September

Assassination Execution Murder Political Crime Trial USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1971: Man Commits Mass Murder: Freed Eight Years Later to Start a New Life

On the night of 6 September 1971, dairy farmer Clifford Bartholomew murdered ten members of his family at their Hope Forest property south of Adelaide, including his wife, seven children aged between four and 19, his sister-in-law and his infant nephew. When police arrived, Bartholomew was sitting calmly at the kitchen table drinking beer; one detective later described him as “cool, calm and collected.”

Bartholomew admitted the killings and was sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Despite the scale of the crime, he was released on parole in 1979 after serving just eight years.

Under the new identity Clifford Palmer, he rebuilt his life, remarried and became stepfather to seven children. He lived quietly until his death in 2002. Years later, his second family learned the full extent of his past and discovered that the man they had known as “Poppy Cliff” had been responsible for one of Australia’s worst family massacres.

Abandoned farmhouse with hangmans noose under dark sky

⬅ See all events from 6 September

Adelaide Australia Family Homicide Hope Forest Massacre Murder SA Trial

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Subscribe to Dark Stories