WA - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1857: Newly Freed, Then Shot by His Employer: A Convict Hanged in Perth for Attempted Murder

John Lloyd, a ticket-of-leave convict working near Geraldton, shot his own labourer John Brown with intent to kill at Port Gregory in June 1857. Brown was himself a former convict, but only months earlier he had been granted a conditional pardon for manslaughter, finally free after years under sentence, before his own employer put a bullet in him.

Lloyd was tried and convicted that October, and hanged at Perth Gaol on this day in 1857. It was not his first brush with the gallows’ shadow: a decade earlier he had been transported for life from Wales for highway robbery, and had already served years in the colony before the shooting that finally ended his.

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Attempted Murder Australia Convict History Execution Geraldton Perth Trial WA

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1884: “A Sort of Duel”: the First Man Hanged at Geraldton

Sing Ong, a Chinese settler at Cape Lesueur on Shark Bay, shot his countryman Ah Foo twice on 11 May 1884 in a quarrel over a servant Sing Ong believed was rightfully his. Witnesses heard the shots and found Ah Foo dying of a wound below the chest, having first picked up a stick and told his killer he was not afraid of his knife, gun, or revolver.

At his trial in Geraldton, his own counsel argued the shooting had been a sort of duel between the two men, pointing out that police never produced the pistol and failed to call other witnesses who might have helped him. The jury convicted him regardless, and the Governor delayed the sentence to weigh a mercy petition, but found nothing in it to change the outcome.

On 29 October 1884, Sing Ong was hanged at Geraldton gaol, the town’s first execution, carried out so cleanly that death came the instant the bolt was drawn.

From his arrest to the gallows, Sing Ong never denied the killing.

The original Geraldton Courthouse, circa 1900. Built in the 1860s, the courthouse was in use when Sing Ong stood trial for murder in 1884. State Library of Western Australia, BA597/26.

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Australia Execution Geraldton Miscarriage of Justice Murder Shark Bay Trial WA

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1885: I Expect the Rope for It’: Henry Sherry Hanged in Perth for a Failed Death Pact

Henry Sherry had formed an attachment to Catherine Waldock, the wife of a neighbouring farmer near the Williams, and proposed they elope together; when she refused, he borrowed a gun and strychnine from a neighbour under the pretence of shooting a hawk. On 16 September 1885 he intercepted her and her two young sons as they walked home from an opossum hunt, led her a short distance away, raised the gun and said “Here goes” before shooting her dead in front of the boys.

The horror deepened once he was found the next morning. Sherry told a neighbour it had all been agreed between them, a pact in which he would kill Catherine and then himself. He claimed to have already swallowed the strychnine and tried to drown himself in a nearby pool, but both attempts failed, “I floated on the top like a corpse.” Resigned to his fate, he said plainly, “I am not going to build up any false hopes; I expect the rope for it.”

Tried and convicted of murder, he was hanged in Perth on this day in 1885. Witnesses described him walking to the scaffold erect and composed, showing almost no sign of fear as the trapdoor fell.

In a letter written to his wife before his death, Sherry acknowledged the “great sin” he had committed and admitted the justice of his sentence.

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Australia Execution Murder Perth Trial WA

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1908: His Final Wish Was to See the Widow Once More: a Japanese Fisherman Hanged in Fremantle

James Henry Shaw took a Japanese fisherman named Oki Iwakichi into partnership at a riverside camp near Pinjarra, letting him manage the household finances and sleep inside the family home while Shaw worked away for months at a time. When Shaw decided to abandon the failing venture and take a job in Fremantle, Oki begged him to stay, warned he would rather die than be left penniless, and took to sleeping with a loaded rifle. On 23 August 1908, as Mrs Shaw stepped outside for rope to tie him down and calm him, Oki shot Shaw through the neck, then fled into the bush, cutting loose every boat moored on the river to slow the alarm.

At his trial, love letters from Oki to his cousin surfaced, claiming he and Mrs Shaw had lived ‘like man and wife’ for over a year; she denied it outright from the stand. The jury convicted him of wilful murder, and when led away to the condemned cell he said he was resigned to his fate, ‘if they let me see Mrs Shaw first.’ He was hanged in Fremantle on this day in 1908.

Oki had denied the charge at trial, but when asked on the gallows if he wished to say anything, he only shook his head; his last words, muttered after the chaplain’s prayer, were ‘Jesus, mercy.’

Oki Iwakichi: West Murray Tragedy murder case 1908

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Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Trial WA

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