1828: The Last Victim of Burke and Hare: a Fatal Night of Drinking in Edinburgh
Margery Campbell, an Irish woman also known as Margaret Docherty, was lured into William Burke’s lodging house in Edinburgh on 31 October 1828 after Burke struck up a conversation with her on the street, claiming a shared homeland. Read more →
1851: A Fabricated Choking Bullock Led to the Murder of a Sleeping Man: Hanged at Launceston
Francis Duke, a servant on George Hill’s farm near Deloraine in northern Tasmania, woke his employer in the middle of the night with an urgent story: the bullock being fattened was choking and needed help. Read more →
1861: They Dined on Stolen Ham While the Family Lay Bound: Thomas Sanders Hanged in Melbourne for a Farmhouse Attack
Thomas Sanders and his accomplice, John Johnson, burst into a farmhouse at Keilor, outside Melbourne, and held the farmer, his pregnant wife and their teenage servant girl at gunpoint for six hours. Read more →
1866: “Unprecedented in Our Annals of Crime”: A Sydney Butcher Committed for Trial Over a Dismembered Body
A boy’s dog scratching at a rubbish heap near a flour mill uncovered a charred human head, its features burned beyond recognition. Read more →
1974: The Man Who Killed Halloween: A Father Poisoned His Own Son for $100,000 in Insurance
Deep in debt and facing the loss of his home and car, Ronald Clark O’Bryan took his eight-year-old son Timothy trick-or-treating through a Pasadena, Texas neighbourhood on this day in 1974 and slipped him a Pixy Stix laced with potassium cyanide. Read more →
1974: Ted Bundy Confessed to Her Killing, but Proof Took 51 Years
Laura Ann Aime left a Halloween party in Lehi, Utah, on this day in 1974 and never made it home. Read more →
1983: The Hillside Strangler Who Sold Out His Own Cousin to Dodge the Death Penalty
Kenneth Bianchi knew exactly what awaited him if convicted of the Hillside Strangler killings, so when police closed in he struck a deal: testify against his older cousin, Angelo Buono, and escape execution himself. Read more →
1984: Indira Gandhi Assassinated by Her Own Bodyguards in New Delhi
Indira Gandhi walked through the garden of her official residence in New Delhi on the morning of 31 October 1984, heading to an interview, when two of her own bodyguards turned their weapons on her. Read more →
