australia - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1826: The Informer Who Refused to Kill: Two Bushrangers Hanged Near Sydney

Patrick Sullivan and James Moran led a gang of bushrangers who terrorised the Bathurst district through 1826, raiding stations and homes for firearms, horses and supplies. When Sullivan ordered a gang member to murder a stockman in cold blood, the man balked, slipped away in the dark and turned himself in, giving evidence that broke the gang apart.

Tried before the Sydney Criminal Court, Sullivan and Moran pleaded guilty to burglary and horse theft and were sentenced to death. They were hanged at Irish Town on the Liverpool Road, near present-day Bankstown, on 18 October 1826, two days after their accomplices were. Their bodies were left suspended for the rest of the day as a warning to others.

Bushrangers flight scene from 1856 illustration

⬅ See all events from 18 October

Australia Bathurst Bushranging Execution Gang NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

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.

⬅ See all events from 18 October

Australia Bushranging Crime History Death NSW VIC Wodonga

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1989: The Granny Killer Survivor Whose Broken Memory Sent Police the Wrong Way

John Wayne Glover, later known as the Granny Killer, followed 86-year-old Doris Cox along Spit Road in Sydney‘s Mosman to her retirement village in 1989, then dragged her into a secluded stairwell and smashed her face into a brick wall.

Cox survived, one of the few to live through an attack that would later be linked to a string of killings targeting elderly women. But she had Alzheimer’s, and her account of the assault was so confused that detectives were steered toward hunting a much younger suspect, a misdirection that bought Glover more time before he was finally caught.

In memory note on paper held in wrinkled hands under dramatic light

⬅ See all events from 18 October

Assault Australia Cold Case Mosman NSW Police Serial Killer Sydney

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

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

⬅ See all events from 17 October

Arson Australia Ballarat Civil Unrest Murder Riot Trial VIC

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Subscribe to Dark Stories