On the night of 19 September 1952, 22 year old Betty Shanks stepped off a tram at the Grange terminus in Brisbane and set off on the short walk home. She never made it and her body was found the next morning, in the front garden of a house just metres from her parents’ own home.
Despite an extensive police investigation and decades of renewed interest, no one was ever charged over her death. The case has become one of Queensland’s most haunting cold cases. A young woman killed almost within sight of her own front door, with her killer never identified.
On September 19, 1980, Veronica Compton attempted to strangle a 26-year-old woman at a motel in Bellingham, Washington. The attack was part of a plot to convince authorities that imprisoned Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi was innocent—and that the real killer remained at large.
Bianchi had supplied Compton with a semen-filled condom concealed in the spine of a book. She was to plant its contents at the scene of a staged rape and murder, creating false evidence to cast doubt on his guilt. But the woman survived, and the scheme unravelled.
Compton was convicted of first-degree attempted murder in March 1981. She remained imprisoned until 2003.
Close-up of worn book spine titled Modern English Drama
John Dunn was convicted at the Parramatta Court of Criminal Jurisdiction of murdering Mary Rowe, largely on the testimony of a sixteen year old accomplice, John Welch, whose evidence also saw Welch’s father, Thomas Welch, convicted as an accessory after the fact.
Dunn was due to hang at Parramatta two days beforehand, on Monday 16 September 1811, but as the execution was about to proceed the boy, John Welch, suddenly retracted everything he had sworn at trial. He declared Dunn innocent and claimed that he and his father were the true killers. The Acting Provost Marshal, unable to consult anyone and acting on what observers called motives of humanity, respited the hanging on the spot.
The reprieve lasted only two days. Dunn was finally executed at Parramatta on the Wednesday following, as near as possible to the site of the murder itself, amid what one witness described as far gloomier circumstances than the original sentence would have produced.
After he was cut down, Dunn’s body was delivered to the medical officer at Parramatta General Hospital, where it was dissected and anatomised before burial. The scaffold retraction left lingering public doubt over Dunn’s guilt, with contemporary accounts noting the boy’s claim that Dunn was innocent and that he and his father were the real perpetrators.
Lady Justice Themis statue on gallows with scales and sword
At 4 a.m. on 25 July 1916, three revolver shots rang out at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. Joseph (Giuseppe) Lauricella, a 32 year old Carlton fruiterer buying tomatoes for his shop, fell dead with wounds to the head and neck. His killer, laborer Antonio Picone, fled through a market shed still clutching a smoking revolver before being tackled and held by a bystander, until police arrived.
Picone, wearing a military reject badge in his lapel, was hauled before the City Court that same day. When the charge was read he insisted, “I didn’t do it,” yet detectives testified he had already told them why he pulled the trigger: “He robbed me of my bread, disgraced me, ruined the whole of my life.”
Despite his courtroom denial, Picone had already given detectives his own account of the killing, telling them plainly it was revenge for the ruin of his livelihood and reputation. Picone was convicted of murder and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 18 September 1916.
Victoria Market Melbourne 1911 Still In Operation Today
