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

On 15 October 1769, during his first voyage along the coast of New Zealand, Lieutenant James Cook watched a group of Maori men attempt to seize a servant from his landing party and haul him away in a canoe. The attempt failed and the servant was recovered, but Cook marked the spot on his chart with a name that stuck: Kidnappers Bay.

According to the Maori version of events recorded at the time, the men believed they were not abducting a stranger at all, but rescuing a Maori boy they thought was being held captive aboard the English ship. The misunderstanding, born of two cultures reading the same scene in entirely different ways, turned a rescue attempt into what the English recorded as a kidnapping.

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Colonial History Exploration Kidnapping New Zealand

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George Williams had already been flogged once for attacking warder James McEvoy at the Fremantle Convict Establishment, and as the irons went on he was overheard to say he was sorry he had not killed him, and would have blown out some brains with a pistol if he’d had one. Fellow convicts later testified he had vowed from his cell to throw McEvoy from the gallery and kill him.

Williams would get his chance. Seeing McEvoy pass by while on work duty, he ran at him with a shovel, beating him to the ground across the legs and head until the handle snapped, leaving the warder with a fractured skull. Convicted of wounding with intent to murder, Williams was hanged on this day at old Perth gaol.

On the scaffold Williams insisted he had never meant to kill McEvoy, and asked that no revenge be taken on those who had given evidence against him.

Businessman burying a womans body in a field with a shovel

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Assault Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Prison Trial WA

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William Dodd, a ticket-of-leave man, struck the bargain that would hang him: ten pounds and a horse named Turk, promised by the wealthy settler’s own wife in exchange for her husband’s death. At the Vasse, Dodd lost his nerve at the bedroom door and had to be plied with more drink before he went back in, seized John Hurford by the throat, and strangled him as the old man cried out.

Convicted at Perth on circumstantial evidence and a damning account from a fellow ticket-of-leave man he had bragged to, Dodd was hanged within the walls of the new gaol on 15 October 1855, alongside the wife who had hired him.

On the scaffold, Dodd tried to shift the blame, insisting that another man had actually struck the fatal blow while he merely stood by, a story that flatly contradicted the confession he himself had made days after the murder.

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Australia Conspiracy Execution Murder Perth Trial Vasse WA

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Bridget Hurford had grown to despise her older, wealthy husband John Hurford long before she decided to have him killed. She paid a ticket-of-leave man named Dodd with cash and the promise of her husband’s own horse to strangle him in his bed at Vasse, first arranging for the man who usually guarded him at night to be sent away, and had another convict quietly forge a will in her favour beforehand.

Tried and convicted alongside Dodd, Hurford was hanged first at the new Perth Gaol on 15 October 1855, attended to the last by her confessors. Witnesses who expected a dramatic collapse instead described her as quiet and subdued as she went to the gallows, even as crowds, among them women carrying infants, gathered to watch.

She fully confessed her guilt before her death, corroborating the evidence given against her at trial.

Bloody zombie woman screaming at camera on black background

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Australia Conspiracy Execution Forgery Murder Perth Trial Vasse WA

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