At 9:30 pm on 5 September 1994, Labor MP John Newman was shot twice and killed instantly in the car park of his Woods Avenue home in Cabramatta, in the western suburbs of Sydney.
His fiancee, Lucy Wang, was present but saw little due to the speed of the attack; she reported a hooded man in an army-style jacket who fired four shots and fled in a waiting car. Newman had represented Cabramatta in the NSW Legislative Assembly since 1986 and had campaigned aggressively against organised crime and drug trafficking in the area. Newman was later given a state funeral. He was 47 years old.
On September 4, 1894, serial killer H. H. Holmes murdered his accomplice Benjamin Pitezel at 1326 Callowhill Street in Philadelphia. The original scheme called for Pitezel to fake his own death under the alias ‘B.F. Perry’, supposedly killed in a lab explosion, with Holmes supplying a substitute corpse so that Pitezel’s wife could collect a $10,000 life insurance policy. Instead, Holmes knocked Pitezel unconscious with chloroform and burned his body with benzene, staging the death as an accident.
A coroner’s jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and Pitezel’s body was buried in a potter’s field. Three weeks later, Holmes collected the $10,000 payout. The murder only unravelled after Philadelphia detective Frank Geyer investigated, ultimately exposing Holmes as one of the most prolific killers in American history.
In September 1939, New York bookmaker Irving Feinstein was strangled to death by members of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the American organised crime syndicate. His body was set alight and dumped in a vacant lot, a signature disposal method of the organisation.
The killing was ordered after Feinstein was accused of doublecrossing a criminal associate. He was one of dozens of victims claimed by Murder Inc. during its brutal reign as a contract killing operation for the mob.
On a wet, cloudy night in 1857, Chong Sigh and Hing Tzan entered the brothel of Sophia Lewis on Exhibition Street, in Melbourne, intending to rob and murder her.
Chong Sigh cut the sleeping woman’s throat, but the first wound was not fatal. Hing Tzan held her down while a second, deeper cut was made. When Lewis moved again, Hing Tzan returned to her and, according to the men’s later confession, almost severed her head from her body.
The pair then plundered the room and slipped away into the night, narrowly avoiding a constable on his beat before eventually scattering to Geelong and Ballarat.
Both men were arrested, confessed and were convicted of murder. Their statements confirmed that Chong Sigh had conceived the plot, with robbery as the motive, while Hing Tzan carried out the final fatal attack.
At Melbourne Gaol, the two men presented a striking contrast on the scaffold. Chong Sigh was overcome with emotion and cried loudly, while Hing Tzan remained comparatively composed and appeared to chant a prayer. Hing Tzan briefly resisted when the execution cap was placed over his head, apparently fearing that his hair was about to be cut, but quickly became calm. Both men were hanged on 3 September 1857.
Hooded man holding a glowing lantern in a dark forest
