1536: The Price of an English Bible: William Tyndale Strangled and Burned for Heresy
William Tyndale committed one crime: he translated the New Testament into English so ordinary readers could understand it for themselves, defying a Church that insisted scripture remain in Latin and under clerical control. Read more →
1794: He Survived a Notorious Convict Voyage to Sydney, Then Was Hanged for Burglary
John Bevan arrived in Sydney aboard the Pitt in February 1792, after a gruelling eight-month voyage during which 29 convicts died, and many others arrived sick. By 1794, Bevan had built a reputation for trouble in the colony and was caught in the act of breaking into the Sydney home of William Fielder. Read more →
1866: America’s First Train Robbery: the Reno Gang Strikes Near Seymour, Indiana
On the night of October 6, 1866, three members of the Reno Gang boarded an Ohio and Mississippi Railway train as it pulled out of Seymour, Indiana, overpowered the express guard and cracked open a safe holding roughly 16,000 dollars. Read more →
1898: Kate Kelly, Sister of Bushranger Ned Kelly, Vanishes Eighteen Years After His Hanging
In 1878, Constable Fitzpatrick arrived alone and drunk at the Kelly family homestead and assaulted fourteen-year-old Kate Kelly, the spark that turned her brothers Ned and Dan into outlaws. Read more →
1909: The Acid “Cure”: Martha Rendell Hanged at Fremantle for Poisoning Her Stepson
In Perth, Martha Rendell told neighbours her stepchildren suffered from chronic sore throats that she treated herself at home. Read more →
1920: A 20-Year Disguise Unravels: Eugenia Falleni Convicted of Murdering the Wife Who Never Knew
For about two decades, Eugenia Falleni lived as a man named Harry Crawford, working ordinary jobs and marrying a woman named Annie Birkett in 1913 without her ever suspecting the truth. Read more →
1960: Aunt Thally Was Still Pouring Tea for Fellow Inmates the Day She Died in Prison
Caroline Grills earned the nickname Aunt Thally for the thallium she slipped into the tea and food of relatives and neighbours, a slow, trusted poisoner convicted in Sydney in 1953 after several deaths in her circle were finally traced back to her cheerful hospitality. Sentenced to life, she was sent to the State Reformatory for Women, where she settled into prison life with the same warm, motherly manner that had once made her so welcome at other people’s tables. Read more →
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. Read more →
1972: The Teacher Who Kicked a Hole in the Kidnappers’ Van and Saved Six Children
At a one-teacher school in rural Victoria, two unemployed plasterers, Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland, burst in with a sawn-off shotgun and forced 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs and her six young pupils into a van, demanding a million dollar ransom. Read more →
1983: The Body Was in the Backyard the Whole Time: a Melbourne Wife Murder Hidden in a Barrel for Two Decades
When Edwina Boyle vanished from her home on this day in Carrum Downs, in Melbourne‘s southeast, in 1983, her husband Frederick Boyle produced a note saying she had run off with a truck driver. Read more →
1986: Lured by a Tyre Ad: the First Victim of the Perth Birnie Killings
On this date in 1986, 22-year-old Mary Neilson visited a house on Moorhouse Street in Perth to buy car tyres advertised for sale. Read more →
