2003: Melbourne Gangland Victim Found Executed with His Partner in Their Own Home

Istvan ‘Steve’ Gulyas ran a dating agency out of Sunbury, on the outskirts of Melbourne, that police suspected was really a front for a brothel. He was also a friend of Nik Radev, a standover figure already gunned down in the city’s escalating underworld war.

That connection made Gulyas a marked man. On 20 October 2003 he and his de facto wife were found shot dead inside their home, both killed in what police treated as a deliberate execution rather than a robbery gone wrong.

The case became one of several unsolved or unresolved killings tied to the broader Melbourne gangland conflict of the late 1990s and 2000s, with no one ever convicted over the double murder.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.
Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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1909: The Bushranger Who Vanished: Larry Cummins Died in Wodonga Under a Stolen Name

Lawrence Cummins once rode as a bushranger across New South Wales, but by the time disease caught up with him he had spent decades as someone else entirely. Living quietly under the assumed name James Long, he settled far from his old haunts and let the past disappear.

He died at Wodonga, Victoria, aged 66, of hepatitis, cirrhosis and Bright’s disease, and was buried in the local cemetery under the name his neighbours knew. Few, if any, of them ever learned they had been living alongside a man with a bushranging past.

Bushranger Larry Cummins
Bushranger Larry Cummins

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1854: An Acquittal Sparks a Riot: Ten Thousand Miners Burn the Eureka Hotel at Ballarat

When the men accused of killing miner James Scobie walked free, the goldfields of Ballarat erupted. Roughly ten thousand miners massed near the Eureka Hotel, the pub where Scobie had been beaten to death, convinced the verdict was a stitch-up between the publican and the authorities.

The crowd set the hotel ablaze and turned on the officials sent to calm them: Gold Commissioner Rede was pelted with eggs as police and soldiers failed to restore order. The riot was a direct spark for the unrest that would culminate weeks later in the Eureka Stockade, one of the defining clashes of Australian colonial history.

Burning of Bentleys Hotel during the Eureka Riot 1854
Burning of Bentleys Hotel during the Eureka Riot 1854

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1889: He Called It an Accident. The Jury Called It Murder: Robert Landells Hanged at Melbourne Gaol

When civil engineer Peter Sherlock vanished in July 1889, his landlord Robert Landells claimed he had gone up country looking for work. About a month later, Sherlock’s body was discovered beneath branches near Ringwood, outside Melbourne, with a fractured skull and devastating gunshot injuries to his face.

Landells told the inquest Sherlock had been broke and depressed, a man likely to have taken his own life. Detectives found otherwise: Sherlock held 200 pounds in securities, and after his disappearance Landells had cashed his cheques and sold his gun to a grazier near Beaufort. Confronted, Landells confessed to shooting Sherlock while passing the loaded gun between them, insisting it was an accident, then panicking and burying the body. A jury did not believe him, and he was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 16 October 1889 in an execution so botched the rope nearly severed his head.

Landells kept to his story of an accident to the end, refusing calls to confess. When the sheriff asked on the scaffold whether he had anything to say, he replied only, “No, sir.”

Sketch of Ringwood mystery crime scene near Dandenong Creek 1889
Sketch of Ringwood mystery crime scene near Dandenong Creek 1889

⬅ See all events from 16 October

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On This Day in True Crime History
1829·Beaten Unconscious Within Sight of the Gaol Wall: Hanged in Sydney for a Brutal Robbery
1894·Caught Serving Poisoned Tea: Martha Needle Hanged in Melbourne for a Family Poisoning Spree
More Crime On This Day →

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