Dark Stories: On This Day In True Crime History - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

2023: Erin Patterson Serves Death Cap Mushrooms to In-Laws at a Lunch in Leongatha

On 29 July 2023, Erin Patterson invited four relatives to her home in Leongatha, Victoria, and served them beef Wellington laced with toxic death cap mushrooms. All four were hospitalised within 24 hours, diagnosed with severe liver failure. Three died within six days, one despite receiving a liver transplant. Ian Wilkinson was the sole survivor, recovering seven weeks later.

Patterson was arrested in November 2023 and charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder. After charges relating to her estranged husband Simon were dropped, she faced trial before a jury in the Supreme Court of Victoria at Morwell. On 7 July 2025, the jury convicted her on all remaining charges. Justice Christopher Beale sentenced her to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years, in the first sentencing hearing in Victoria to be broadcast live.

Beef

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Australia Leongatha Morwell Murder Poisoning Trial VIC

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1976: Son of Sam Claims His First Victim in the Bronx

Just after 1 a.m. on July 29, 1976, David Berkowitz approached a parked car in the Pelham Bay neighbourhood of the Bronx and opened fire with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. Donna Lauria, 18, was killed instantly by a single bullet. Her companion Jody Valenti, 19, survived a gunshot wound to the thigh. It was the first in a series of shootings that would terrorise New York City for over a year. Berkowitz, who came to be known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, ultimately killed six people and wounded eleven before a parking ticket led investigators to his door. Arrested in August 1977, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received six concurrent life sentences.

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1794: The Fall of Robespierre: The Architect of the Terror Meets the Guillotine

Maximilien Robespierre, the lawyer turned revolutionary who came to embody the ruthless machinery of the French Revolution, was executed by guillotine in Paris on 28 July 1794. As the dominant force on the Committee of Public Safety, he had overseen the Reign of Terror, a period in which thousands were sent to the blade in the name of republican virtue. His own arrest, the day before, had come swiftly after the National Convention turned against him.

The man who had signed so many death warrants met the same end he had prescribed for others. Wounded during his arrest, reportedly from a gunshot to the jaw, he was carried to the scaffold in agony. His execution marked the end of the Terror and the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction, a conservative turn that dismantled much of what he had built.

Arrest

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Europe Execution France Political Crime Revolution

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1540: Thomas Cromwell Beheaded on Tower Hill for Treason Against Henry VIII

Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII and chief architect of the English Reformation, was executed on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. Born around 1485 in Putney, Surrey, he had risen from humble origins to become the most powerful man in England after the king, reshaping both church and government. His downfall came after he arranged the king’s disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves, a union annulled within six months. Arraigned under an act of attainder for treason and heresy, he was beheaded without trial.

On the same day Cromwell lost his head, Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Henry later expressed deep regret at the execution of his chief minister, widely regarded as one of the most consequential acts of his reign.

Portrait

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England Europe Execution London Political Crime Trial UK