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

1865: He Meant No Harm, Said the Man He Stabbed: Thomas Bushell Hanged at Fremantle

Thomas Bushell, an Imperial convict working in the bake-house at the Convict Establishment in Fremantle, took a 12-inch dough-knife from the bake-house on Sunday 9 July 1865. During the muster of prisoners for church service on C and D landing, he struck warder George Hollis on the head, then stabbed him in the back as Hollis passed, prompting Hollis to cry out, “Secure Bushell, for he has stabbed me.”

At his trial before Chief Justice Burt on 6 September 1865, the wounded warder himself testified that he did not believe Bushell had meant to kill him. The jury convicted him anyway of maliciously wounding with intent to murder, and he was sentenced to death and hanged just days after the verdict.

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Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Prison Trial WA

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1940: Screaming in Terror: Murder Inc. Gunman Arrested Hiding in a Manhattan Church

Vito ‘Socko’ Gurino, a trigger man for the Brooklyn-based crime syndicate Murder Inc., was finally cornered on September 12, 1940, not in some underworld hideout but inside the Church of the Guardian Angel in Manhattan, where he had been hiding out from New Jersey. Detectives found him screaming hysterically, convinced his own associates were coming to silence him for good.

The fear was not unfounded. Gurino had spent weeks in fear of his life, aware that Murder Inc. dealt with liabilities by killing them before they could talk to police.

Once in custody, Gurino broke quickly, confessing to three murders carried out on the syndicate’s orders and implicating himself in four more killings, opening a window into the machine-like efficiency of contract killing that had terrorised the New York underworld for years.

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Arrest Confession Gang Murder New Jersey New York Organised Crime USA

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1721: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away: Hanged at Tyburn for Returning from Transportation

John Meff was a housebreaker who had already cheated the gallows once, having been convicted and then transported to the colonies rather than executed. But transportation was meant to be permanent exile, and Meff broke its terms by making his way back to England, a crime that under the law of the day carried the same penalty as the original offence: death.

He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to hang for illegally returning from transportation. On 11 September 1721 he was taken to Tyburn and executed at the age of forty, going to the gallows alongside James Redding, who had been condemned separately for robbery.

For Meff the return to Tyburn marked the end of a second chance he could not keep: having once escaped the noose through transportation, the simple act of coming home proved fatal.

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Crime and Punishment Execution London Robbery Transportation UK

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1978: The Umbrella That Killed: Assassinated with a Ricin Pellet

Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was waiting for a bus on Waterloo Bridge in London when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his leg. He turned to see a man pick up a dropped umbrella and hurry away, offering a mumbled apology. Markov thought little of it until a small red mark and fever set in over the following days.

The umbrella had been rigged to fire a tiny pellet packed with ricin, a poison for which there was and is no antidote. Markov died four days later, on 11 September 1978, from the resulting blood poisoning, becoming one of the most infamous casualties of Cold War espionage.

His killer would not be identified for almost three decades. It was not until 2005 that leaked files named the assassin as Francesco Gullino, an agent working for the Bulgarian secret service, though he was never extradited or tried for the murder.

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Assassination Cold Case Espionage Europe Poisoning Political Crime UK

1865: He Meant No Harm, Said the Man He Stabbed: Thomas Bushell Hanged at Fremantle

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1940: Screaming in Terror: Murder Inc. Gunman Arrested Hiding in a Manhattan Church

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1721: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away: Hanged at Tyburn for Returning from Transportation

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1978: The Umbrella That Killed: Assassinated with a Ricin Pellet

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