australia - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1976: Rejected From a Model Plane Club, He Opened Fire on the Streets of Spring Hill in Brisbane

On 22 September 1976, 36-year-old William Robert Wilson opened fire on Boundary Street in Spring Hill, a suburb of Brisbane. Armed with a .22-calibre rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition, he killed two teenage girls and wounded four other people. He had reportedly been upset after being rejected for membership by a model plane club.

Wilson then fled to a house in nearby Kelvin Grove and took five student teachers hostage. After around two hours of negotiations, one hostage escaped by pretending she needed the bathroom. Police stormed the house around 4pm, exchanging gunfire with Wilson before overpowering him and freeing the remaining captives.

Wilson spent three years in Hospital before being considered fit to plead. On 23 June 1980, he pleaded guilty to two murders and four attempted murders, receiving two life sentences and concurrent ten-year prison terms.

Old Windmill Brisbane, built by convicts at Moreton Bay penal settlement

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Australia Brisbane Kidnapping Mass Shooting Mental Illness Murder QLD Trial

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1852: The Last Public Hanging in NSW: Francis Thomas Green Executed at Darlinghurst Gaol

Francis Thomas Green was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 21 September 1852 for the murder of John Jones at Buckley’s Creek on 10 March that year, shot dead with a pistol. The execution holds a grim distinction: it was the last public hanging carried out in New South Wales.

The morning of the execution broke dark and drizzling, yet the crowd was of the usual size, with women reportedly outnumbering men by nearly three to one. A carriage carrying women described by the press as being of “respectable exterior” was drawn up directly in front of the gallows, its occupants showing what one newspaper called a “disgusting eagerness” to secure the best view, while mothers nursed infants and children ran boisterously among the onlookers.

Green’s wife visited him for a final farewell the day before his death, the only moment he was seen to show real emotion. He spent his last night in prayer with a Roman Catholic priest, having initially refused all ministers before requesting Catholic clergy in his final days.

Green made a partial admission to a gaol official before his death, saying that Jones had fallen by his hand “in the heat of a sudden quarrel”.

Darlinghurst Gaol northeast corner view from Burton Street 1870

⬅ See all events from 21 September

Australia Darlinghurst Execution Murder NSW Sydney Trial

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1952: An All-Night Manhunt: 400 Police Search Brisbane

By the early hours of 21 September 1952, more than 400 police had been drawn into the hunt for Betty Shanks’s killer in Brisbane. Patrol cars criss-crossed the suburbs and officers searched streets and parks through the night. Police leave was cancelled, at least 100 investigators went without sleep, and residents near the Wilston murder scene were warned to lock doors and windows amid fears of another attack.

An early lead came to nought, and after roughly 20 hours of investigation police were still searching without a breakthrough. A description was issued of a man wanted in connection with the killing, following reports of someone leaping a fence near where Betty’s body was found. Despite the massive manhunt, her murder would become one of Brisbane’s most famous cold cases, still unsolved today.

Crime scene street where Betty Shanks was killed near her home Brisbane

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Australia Brisbane Cold Case Goodna Manhunt Murder Police QLD Toowoomba Unsolved Wilston

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1822: Eight Convicts Fled Macquarie Harbour, and Two Ate the Rest

On 20 September 1822, Alexander Pearce, Bob Greenhill and six other convicts escaped the brutal penal outpost of Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast, plunging into some of the most impenetrable wilderness in the colony with almost no food or supplies.

As starvation set in, the group turned on itself. Greenhill, who had once been a butcher, took the lead in killing and butchering their companions one by one to survive, and Pearce joined him in eating the flesh of the dead.

Eventually only Pearce and Greenhill remained, each watching the other, until Pearce killed Greenhill as well and continued alone, becoming the last man standing from the original party of eight.

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Australia Cannibalism Escape Murder Prison TAS

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