Trial - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1942: The Brownout Strangler: Eddie Leonski Hanged in Melbourne,

Edward "Eddie" Leonski, an American soldier posted to wartime Melbourne, strangled three women during the wartime blackouts that earned him the nickname the Brownout Strangler. After killing one victim in May 1942, he stumbled drunk into his tent muttering "I killed! I killed!" to a startled tent mate, then calmly read newspaper reports of his own crime over breakfast. He later told investigators his obsession was with his victims' voices: "She had a lovely voice. I wanted that voice... I choked her."

Tried by an American military court-martial under United States law, Leonski became the first foreign national ever tried and sentenced to death in Australia under the laws of his own country. General Douglas MacArthur personally signed the execution order, and Leonski was hanged in Melbourne on this day in 1942.

Leonski never disputed his guilt, later telling detectives of his crimes, "Fancy me a murderer."

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Australia Execution Melbourne Military Crime Murder Serial Killer Trial VIC

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1889: Identified by a Crooked Toe and a Pair of Scissors: a Kimberley Murderer Hanged in Fremantle

Louis, a Filipino labourer who had carefully saved his wages on the Kimberley gold fields, left Hall's Creek with his workmate Harry Pres on 9 June 1889, bound, Pres later claimed, for a camp further south. Days afterwards a teamster found a body smouldering at a river crossing, the skull crushed and the corpse heaped with burning wood until it was almost unrecognisable.

What gave the dead man back his name were things Pres could not burn away: a nicked pair of barber's scissors, a distinctive water bag, and one small, oddly shaped toe. The same items turned up in Pres's possession, along with one of Louis's sovereigns stained with blood. The jury took just half an hour to convict him, and he was hanged in Fremantle on this day in 1889.

Pres prayed with a fellow Muslim prisoner to the last and swore his innocence on the Koran before the drop. Shortly before his death he told a warder: "You have taken my clothes, my money, and now you take my life, same as your Christ: his clothes, his money, and his life taken too."

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Australia Execution Fremantle Gold Rush Kimberley Murder Trial WA

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2001: Katherine Knight: the First Woman in Australia Sentenced to Life Without Parole for a Meat-Hook Murder

John Price's workmates watched him grow afraid of the woman he could not quite leave. In a town in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, Knight had already stabbed him once before, and on 28 February 2000 he took out a restraining order against her, warning colleagues that if he failed to turn up for work the next day, it would be because she had killed him.

He was right. Knight stabbed Price more than thirty times as he slept, then skinned him and hung the skin from a meat hook in the hallway. She cooked parts of his body with vegetables and set two places at the dinner table, each marked with the name of one of his children, as though preparing him to be eaten by them.

Knight first offered to plead guilty to manslaughter, then switched her plea to guilty mid-trial, prompting an overnight psychiatric assessment to confirm she understood what she was doing. On this day in 2001, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole period at all, her file marked never to be released, the first time any woman in Australia had received such a sentence.

Knight never explained why she changed her plea, and even then she denied responsibility for what she had done, insisting she remembered nothing of the killing.

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Australia Domestic Violence Hunter Valley Murder Mutilation NSW Prison Trial

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1848: Denying the Fatal Blow: John Jordan Hanged at Launceston for a Plotted Robbery Murder

John Jordan, a young shoemaker, and farmhand Patrick McDonough spent months plotting to rob an elderly settler named Zimram Youram, using a pair of boots Jordan was making for him as their pretext to keep calling at his isolated hut near Launceston. When an attempt to drug the old man failed, McDonough bludgeoned him with a wrench hammer while Jordan looked on, and the pair ransacked the hut for his hidden savings, walking away with about 17 pounds in coins and notes.

The two men quickly turned on each other. Jordan's confession named McDonough as the killer, while McDonough claimed Jordan had struck the blow. A powerful defence swayed the jury and McDonough walked free of the murder charge, though he was held for the robbery; Jordan was convicted and condemned. He was hanged at Launceston on this day in 1848.

On the scaffold, Jordan insisted he had not struck the fatal blow and had tried to stop the killing, declaring that it would one day be discovered who truly committed it. His last words, delivered calmly to the crowd, were "God bless you all."

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Australia Confession Execution Launceston Murder Robbery TAS Trial

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