1965: The Situation Got Out of Hand: A Moors Murder Committed Before a Horrified Witness

In October 1965, Ian Brady picked up seventeen-year-old Edward Evans at a Manchester railway station, telling him he had been invited home for a drink. At the house on Wardle Brook Avenue, Brady had Myra Hindley fetch her brother-in-law David Smith under the pretext of sharing miniature wine bottles. Smith arrived in time to witness Brady strike Evans with a hatchet and strangle him with electrical cord, screams tearing through the house as Hindley called out for help.

Smith helped move the body to a spare room before fleeing home, where he was sick and told his wife everything. He contacted police the next morning armed with a screwdriver and bread knife in case Brady came after him. Officers found Evans’ body behind a locked door, and as he dressed for arrest, Brady offered a chillingly understated explanation: he and Evans “had a row and the situation got out of hand.” The killing exposed what became known as the Moors Murders.

Shocked male witness after fatal late night accident
Shocked male witness after fatal late night accident

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1999: Timestamps Do Not Lie: the Software Trail That Caught Harold Shipman

Harold Shipman was a trusted family doctor in Hyde, England, who killed his patients with lethal injections of diamorphine and then falsified their medical records to make the deaths look natural. He often urged grieving families toward cremation, quietly destroying the evidence a post-mortem might have found.

What he did not understand was his own surgery computer. The practice software secretly time stamped every entry, and when investigators compared those hidden timestamps to the dates on his altered files, the lie was obvious: he had been rewriting patient histories after his victims were already dead. He went on trial in 1999 charged with just 15 murders, though he is believed to have killed close to 250 patients over more than two decades, making him Britain’s most prolific serial killer.

Shipman never confessed and maintained his innocence throughout the trial. He was convicted on all counts and later took his own life in prison.

A Serial Killers Computer Log tracked everything.
A Serial Killers Computer Log tracked everything.

⬅ See all events from 5 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1977: The Banknote Clue That Could Have Caught the Yorkshire Ripper Years Early

Peter Sutcliffe hammered 20 year old Jean Jordan to death near a cemetery in Manchester, then realised the brand new £5 note he had just paid her was traceable straight back to his wage packet. Nine days later he returned in the dark to retrieve it, could not find it, and instead mutilated her body and attempted to cut off her head.

The note had been lying just outside the police search area the whole time, in her handbag under a fence. Detectives traced it to a Bradford pay run and interviewed thousands of workers, including Sutcliffe himself, twice. His alibi held, the inquiry stalled, and the man holding the incriminating fiver walked free for years before he was finally caught as the Yorkshire Ripper.

Piggy bank and new banknotes. Woman holding a piggy bank and new UK five pound notes | ID 82241351 © Peter Titmuss | Dreamstime.com
ID 82241351 © Peter Titmuss | Dreamstime.com

⬅ See all events from 1 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1888: The Double Event: Jack the Ripper Kills Twice in One Night in London

In the early hours, the killer known as Jack the Ripper struck twice within the same hour. His third victim, Elizabeth Stride, was found with her throat cut and still bleeding, her killer likely interrupted before he could mutilate her further. Denied his ritual, he found a fourth victim within the hour: Catherine Eddowes, whose body was left with her intestines arranged over her shoulder and part of her womb removed.

Weeks later, a Londoner opened a parcel addressed simply “From Hell” to find half a preserved kidney inside, accompanied by a taunting letter. Tests suggested it may have belonged to Eddowes herself, though the claim was never proven and the killer was never caught.

Murders of Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes
Murders of Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes

⬅ See all events from 30 September

Spread the word on your favourite platform!
On This Day in True Crime History
1853·"Thank You, My Lord, I Am Very Glad of That Sentence": Bushrangers Hanged in Melbourne
1884·He Swore to Shoot Whoever Bought His Farm, and Kept His Word: Hanged in Melbourne
1892·"The Only Man on the Station That I Liked": Hanged in Brisbane for a Torres Strait Murder
1892·A Mutilated Body in a Trunk: Sailor Hanged in Brisbane for Murder at Sea
1895·George Dean, Pardoned for Poisoning His Wife, Convicted of Perjury in Sydney
More Crime On This Day →

Subscribe to Dark Stories

True crime stories, dark history and tour news, straight to your inbox.