2011: Killed Behind Bars: Matthew Johnson Convicted of Murdering Gangland Assassin Carl Williams

Carl Williams had already been convicted of multiple murders during Melbourne’s gangland war when he was bashed to death with the stem of an exercise bike in a high-security unit at Victoria’s Barwon Prison in 2010, an inmate supposedly protected by round-the-clock surveillance.

Matthew Charles Johnson, a fellow prisoner sharing the unit, was charged with the killing. On this day in 2011 a jury found him guilty of murdering the man once considered one of the country’s most feared underworld figures, in an attack that exposed how little safety the prison’s most secure wing actually offered its most notorious inmate.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.
Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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1829: The Informer They Called Kangaroo Jack: Silenced in the Bush Near Bathurst

John Hazeldine went by the name Kangaroo Jack, and he liked to remind men what his evidence could do: he claimed it had hanged one man in England and transported two others. So when he and a young absconded convict named Parker were caught butchering a stolen bullock in the bush near Bathurst in 1828, Parker knew exactly what Hazeldine intended to do next. That evening, as Hazeldine knelt blowing a campfire alight, Parker struck him with a tomahawk.

The case against him rested almost entirely on a confession he was said to have made to two fellow convicts, men a settler who watched the trial branded liars who “contradicted each other in all other things” and may have been the real killers. It was enough. Parker, about 19, was hanged behind the gaol at Sydney on 28 September 1829, still hoping until the last for a reprieve.

He denied the murder almost to the moment the rope was placed around his neck, then confessed his guilt as the drop was prepared.

Campfire with hand-forged axe at night.
Campfire with hand-forged axe at night.

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1854: Being Drunk Was No Excuse: A Husband Hanged at Maitland for Beating His Wife to Death

Neighbours near Lydney Park on the Hunter River heard Mary Walsh begging “to spare her life” as the blows fell, then heard her husband Christopher Walsh order her to leave the house. She said she could not. By morning she lay dead on the floor, covered in bruises, a gun and blood-stained trousers found nearby.

At his trial, his own counsel argued that jealousy and drink should reduce the killing to manslaughter. The jury was not persuaded, convicting him of wilful murder after less than two hours. He was hanged at Maitland gaol before a crowd of some four hundred, including women and children.

On the scaffold he had a message read out: he claimed he had come home sober, only for suspicion of his wife’s infidelity to work him into a rage that drink then inflamed. He said he now believed her faithful, regretted his violence, and held no animosity.

Empty bottle on wooden background symbolizing alcoholism
Empty bottle on wooden background symbolizing alcoholism

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1869: Wild Bill Hickok Shoots Cowboy Dead During Saloon Disturbance

At about one o’clock on the morning of 27 September 1869, Sheriff “Wild Bill” Hickok and his deputy responded to a disturbance at John Bitter’s Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas. A cowboy named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken companions were reportedly damaging the saloon. During the confrontation, Strawhun made remarks against Hickok, who shot him through the head, killing him.

Hickok maintained that he had been trying to restore order. Despite conflicting witness accounts, a jury at the coroner’s inquest ruled the shooting justifiable. Strawhun was the second man Hickok had killed during his first month as sheriff.

Sepia portrait of Wild Bill Hickok
Sepia portrait of Wild Bill Hickok

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On This Day in True Crime History

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