Prison - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1833: 375 Lashes and Still Running: The Convict Hanged at Hobart After One Final Burglary

Thomas Ansell was transported from London for petty larceny, but Van Diemen's Land turned him into one of its most punished prisoners. In barely two years on road gangs he was flogged with 375 lashes for absconding, insolence and neglect, his sentence stretched again and again, and his body became so densely marked with tattoos, a sun, a moon, a mermaid, hearts and darts, that authorities used the ink to identify him on runaway notices circulated as far as London.

None of it stopped him. Ansell fell in with a bushranging gang operating near New Norfolk, breaking into the home of Robert and Mary Hatch and stealing what he could carry. Caught and convicted of burglary, he was hanged in front of the gaol at Hobart on 1 November 1833, aged twenty-four.

Convict flogging punishment scene in Tasmania

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Australia Burglary Execution Hobart Prison TAS Theft

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2018: Whitey Bulger: Boston's Most Wanted Mob Boss Beaten to Death Within Hours of a New Prison Transfer

James "Whitey" Bulger ran Boston's underworld for decades while secretly informing for the FBI, a betrayal that let his gang operate almost untouched. He vanished in 1994 after a tip-off from his own handler, spent sixteen years as a fugitive second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI's most wanted list, and was finally captured in California in 2011. Convicted in 2013 of racketeering and involvement in eleven murders, he was handed two life sentences.

Five years later, the 89 year old and wheelchair bound Bulger was abruptly transferred to a high security prison in West Virginia, his medical status quietly downgraded just weeks earlier. He arrived on 29 October 2018. Within hours, on this day in 2018, he was found beaten to death in his cell, attacked with a sock wrapped padlock and a shiv so savagely a law enforcement official called him unrecognisable.

Mafia hitman Fotios Geas was later identified as the man behind the killing and in 2024 was sentenced to 25 years for voluntary manslaughter. A relative of one of Bulger's own victims summed up the reaction of many: "He died the way I hoped he always was going to die."

James Joseph Bulger Jr portrait photograph 1953

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Gang Murder Organised Crime Prison USA

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1968: Ben-Hur Star Ramon Novarro Tortured to Death Over a Fortune That Never Existed

Ramon Novarro had been one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the silent era, hailed as the screen's first Latin American leading man after his role in Ben-Hur made him a household name. By 1968 his career had faded, but two brothers, Paul and Tom Ferguson, had heard a rumour that he kept a fortune hidden somewhere in his Laurel Canyon home. The younger of the two got Novarro's phone number from a former guest, called offering sexual services, and the pair talked their way inside.

When Novarro could not produce the money, because none existed, the brothers beat him for hours trying to force him to reveal where it was hidden. He died on 30 October 1968, choking on his own blood after the prolonged assault; the men left with just $20 taken from his bathrobe pocket. Both were convicted and served only a few years before being paroled in the mid-1970s.

Paul Ferguson denied responsibility for decades, but in a 1998 interview he finally admitted to killing Novarro.

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California Celebrity Crime Hollywood Los Angeles Murder Prison Robbery Trial USA

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1841: First Blood on the Gallows: Two Men Hanged at the New Darlinghurst Gaol

Two men became the first to hang at the newly built gaol at Darlinghurst on 29 October 1841, a grim christening for a site that would host executions for decades to come.

Robert Hudson went to the gallows for murdering a fellow convict, Dean Charfry West, at the General Hospital in Sydney.

George Stroud, hanged alongside him, had murdered his wife, a crime he later blamed entirely on drink.

Both men were reported penitent on the scaffold, kneeling in prayer before the drop fell. Stroud asked the attending minister to warn the crowd of the dangers that had led him there, "since, by having been guilty of that sin, he had been induced to commit the terrible crime for which he was then about to suffer".

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Australia Darlinghurst Execution Murder NSW Prison Sydney

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