VIC - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1861: They Dined on Stolen Ham While the Family Lay Bound: Thomas Sanders Hanged in Melbourne for a Farmhouse Attack

Thomas Sanders and his accomplice, John Johnson, burst into a farmhouse at Keilor, outside Melbourne, and held the farmer, his pregnant wife and their teenage servant girl at gunpoint for six hours. They nailed the windows shut, hung the family’s double-barrelled gun out of reach, then settled by the fire to fry a stolen ham and drink the household’s wine and brandy while their captives sat bound and silent in the kitchen.

At trial, Sanders admitted his involvement in the robbery but disputed the evidence against him on the more serious charge. Both men were convicted, and Sanders was hanged on 31 October 1861. The rope had been improperly adjusted, leaving him struggling on the gallows for three minutes. He maintained his innocence of the capital offence to the end, declaring before the execution crowd, “I stand before you innocent of the offence for which I am about to die… I swear I am innocent.”

Cast-iron pan with pork belly cooking over a forest campfire

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Assault Australia Execution Home Invasion Melbourne Robbery Trial VIC

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1878: Shoot on Sight: the Extraordinary Law That Outlawed Ned Kelly

Just four days after three police officers were shot dead at Stringybark Creek, the Victorian government introduced the Felons Apprehension Bill on 30 October 1878, paving the way for extraordinary powers that would allow Ned Kelly and his gang to be declared outlaws.

Once Ned and his brother Dan were formally declared outlaws, they could legally be shot on sight by police or any member of the public, without first standing trial. The legislation also threatened severe penalties for anyone knowingly sheltering or assisting the fugitives.

The crackdown extended beyond the outlaws themselves. Police arrested suspected Kelly sympathisers, with around twenty men detained for months as authorities attempted to break the gang’s network of support. The heavy-handed campaign fuelled resentment among sections of the local population, strengthening sympathy for the very men the government was determined to capture.

Even after the gang robbed banks at Euroa and Jerilderie, prompting Victoria and New South Wales to offer a combined reward of £8,000 in February 1879, the outlaws remained at large. It took another sixteen months, and the bloody siege at Glenrowan in June 1880, before Ned Kelly, wearing his homemade iron armour, was finally captured.

Troopers pursuing the Kelly Gang on horseback

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Australia Bushranging Legislation Manhunt Outlaw Political Crime VIC

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1953: Twin Brothers Who Became the After Dark Bandit, Unmasked by a Single Photograph

Peter and Doug Morgan, identical twins born in regional Victoria on this day in 1953, grew up to pull off more than twenty armed robberies across the state as the so-called After Dark Bandit, a single figure police hunted for two years without ever suspecting he was two men. Wearing matching clothes and disguises, the brothers struck rural banks and betting shops in towns just twenty minutes apart, sending detectives chasing a suspect who seemed able to be in two places at once. Their habit of striking near closing time and escaping into the bush under cover of darkness earned them their nickname.

The ruse unravelled on 27 April 1979, when Peter robbed the Heathcote bank for a third time and shot veteran constable Ray Koch twice, leaving him fighting for his life. Fleeing into the bush as nearly two hundred officers swarmed the area, he resurfaced the next morning walking through Bendigo with a suitcase, telling a suspicious unarmed constable, Rick Hasty, that he was headed to Melbourne to watch the football. Inside the case Hasty found a sawn-off shotgun, stolen cash and an old man’s mask. When Morgan drew a pistol, he was unable to fire it, and as Hasty pinned him against a wall, he reportedly said, “You’ve got me, I just made you a hero.”

The investigation took another extraordinary turn when detectives searching Peter’s farm discovered a photograph of him sitting beside another man with the same face, moustache and sideburns. Detective Patrick Brear realised the truth and telephoned his partner: the elusive After Dark Bandit was not one man but two. Peter had an identical twin brother, Doug, and the pair had been using their matching appearances to outwit police for nearly two years.

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Armed Robbery Australia Bendigo Heathcote Manhunt Melbourne Robbery Shooting Twins VIC

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1880: Ned Kelly Sentenced to Hang in Melbourne

Ned Kelly, the leader of the Kelly Gang, had spent years outrunning the law across the Victorian bush, his armour and audacity turning him into both outlaw and folk hero. That ended after the siege at Glenrowan, where he was captured wounded and alone while the rest of his gang died in the shootout or the fire that followed.

He was tried in Melbourne for the murder of a police constable, and on this day in 1880 he was sentenced to death. Within weeks the man who had defied colonial police for years would be hanged, his legend only growing in the telling long after the rope did its work.

Ned Kelly in the dock courtroom illustration: colorised.

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Australia Bushranger Execution Melbourne Murder Trial VIC

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