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

1894: Fred Jordan Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of Minnie Crabtree

Frederick Jordan, an American convicted of killing his girlfriend Minnie Crabtree at Port Melbourne, was executed at Melbourne Gaol on the morning of 20 August 1894. He had maintained a quiet, composed demeanour throughout his time in the condemned cell, receiving last rites from Rev. Dean M’Kenna after Father Walshe fell ill and could not attend.

Jordan walked to the gallows with a firm step, stood erect before the assembled witnesses. When asked if he had anything to say, Jordan replied: ‘I have nothing to say: it’s no use to say anything.’, and was executed without incident.

Fred Jordan

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Australia Execution Melbourne Murder Port Melbourne VIC

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1986: Patrick Sherrill Kills 14 at Oklahoma Post Office, Coining a Dark New Phrase

On August 20, 1986, part-time mail carrier Patrick Sherrill walked into the post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, and opened fire on his colleagues, shooting 20 people and killing 14 before turning the gun on himself. It was the first mass shooting by an individual in a US office workplace environment, and it sent shockwaves through American working life.

The massacre gave rise to the phrase ‘going postal’, a term for sudden, explosive workplace rage. Between 1970 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed by current or former postal employees in at least 20 separate incidents, cementing the phrase in the English vocabulary.

Going Postal

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Mass Shooting Murder USA Workplace Crime

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1865: John Wesley Hardin Gunned Down in an El Paso Saloon

John Wesley Hardin was one of the most feared gunfighters of the American Old West. Born in Texas in 1853 to a Methodist preacher, he killed his first man at 15 and spent the following decade evading lawmen across the South. Sentenced to 24 years for murder in 1877, Hardin claimed to have killed 42 men, though historians estimate the true figure exceeded 20. He studied law in prison and wrote a self-aggrandising autobiography, widely noted for its exaggerations.

Within a year of his 1894 release, Hardin was shot dead by constable John Selman in the Acme Saloon in El Paso. Hardin had been gambling, rolling dice at the bar, and his last words were reportedly “Four sixes to beat.” Moments later, Selman walked up behind him and shot him in the head. Hardin was 42 years old.

Portrait of outlaw John Wesley Hardin

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Gang Murder Organised Crime Prison Trial USA

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1831: The Burking Murder: Elizabeth Ross Smothers an Elderly Woman to Sell Her Corpse

In August 1831, Elizabeth Ross suffocated 84-year-old Caroline Walsh at lodgings in Goodman’s Yard, Minories, London. Walsh had been lured to move in with Ross and her partner Edward Cook. Ross held her hand over the elderly woman’s mouth for half an hour as she lay on the bed, killing her to sell the body to medical institutions, a practice known as burking.

The case emerged during a period of intense demand for cadavers in British medical schools, driven by the expansion of anatomical education following the Napoleonic Wars. Just three years earlier, the infamous Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh had shocked the country, and the London Burkers, John Bishop and Thomas Williams, had committed a similar anatomy murder the same year as Ross.

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London Murder Organised Crime UK

1894: Fred Jordan Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of Minnie Crabtree

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1986: Patrick Sherrill Kills 14 at Oklahoma Post Office, Coining a Dark New Phrase

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1865: John Wesley Hardin Gunned Down in an El Paso Saloon

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1831: The Burking Murder: Elizabeth Ross Smothers an Elderly Woman to Sell Her Corpse

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