On This Day in True Crime History – 15 October

On 15 October 1769, during his first voyage along the coast of New Zealand, Lieutenant James Cook watched a group of Maori men attempt to seize a servant from his landing party and haul him away in a canoe. Read more →

Bridget Hurford had grown to despise her older, wealthy husband John Hurford long before she decided to have him killed. Read more →

William Dodd, a ticket-of-leave man, struck the bargain that would hang him: ten pounds and a horse named Turk, promised by the wealthy settler’s own wife in exchange for her husband’s death. Read more →

George Williams had already been flogged once for attacking warder James McEvoy at the Fremantle Convict Establishment, and as the irons went on he was overheard to say he was sorry he had not killed him, and would have blown out some brains with a pistol if he’d had one. Read more →

James Gardiner, a 19-year-old cabman, lived off the earnings of a woman known as German Ada in a Rockhampton brothel. Read more →

She was born Margaretha Zelle in the Netherlands and reinvented herself in Paris as Mata Hari, an exotic dancer whose stage act and string of wealthy, often military, lovers made her a sensation across Europe. Read more →

Caroline Grills was the kind of woman neighbours trusted: she brought cups of tea and homemade treats to relatives and friends, and several of them sickened and died. Read more →

Andrei Chikatilo cut the eyes from his victims, believing the dead retained an image of their killer burned into their retinas. Read more →