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1808: The Bushranger Who Apologised Mid-Robbery, Then Hanged at Sydney

Hugh Dowling and his accomplices broke into William Styles’s house near the Nepean River in 1808, beat a sleeping servant unconscious, bound Styles’s wife as she nursed an infant, and ransacked the home at gunpoint. When Styles’s wife protested handing over her husband’s watch, Dowling reportedly replied, “I ask your pardon madam,” before taking a pipe instead and settling in to smoke tobacco with his companions before leaving.

He wore a crude crape mask, but it slipped while he examined stolen banknotes by candlelight, and Styles’s wife later swore in court that she had seen his bare face clearly enough to identify him without doubt. Convicted despite an alibi the court found riddled with contradictions, Dowling was sentenced to death and hanged the following Thursday.

Dowling maintained his innocence through trial, but the alibi he offered collapsed under questioning and was judged a fabrication by the court.

Antique pocket watch resting on old books.

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Australia Burglary Execution Nepean NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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1829: The Informer They Called Kangaroo Jack: Silenced in the Bush Near Bathurst

John Hazeldine went by the name Kangaroo Jack, and he liked to remind men what his evidence could do: he claimed it had hanged one man in England and transported two others. So when he and a young absconded convict named Parker were caught butchering a stolen bullock in the bush near Bathurst in 1828, Parker knew exactly what Hazeldine intended to do next. That evening, as Hazeldine knelt blowing a campfire alight, Parker struck him with a tomahawk.

The case against him rested almost entirely on a confession he was said to have made to two fellow convicts, men a settler who watched the trial branded liars who “contradicted each other in all other things” and may have been the real killers. It was enough. Parker, about 19, was hanged behind the gaol at Sydney on 28 September 1829, still hoping until the last for a reprieve.

He denied the murder almost to the moment the rope was placed around his neck, then confessed his guilt as the drop was prepared.

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Australia Bathurst Execution Informer Murder NSW Sydney Trial

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1829: The Five-Pound Threshold: Two Men Hanged at Sydney for Burglary

Daniel Grier and Charles Penson were hanged at Sydney in 1829 for nothing more than burglary: stealing from a dwelling house goods valued at just over five pounds, a sum that under the law of the day was enough to turn a break-in into a hanging offence.

They died on the same gallows as a young murderer, though their own execution became its own grim spectacle. As the drop fell, the rope twisted at the nape of Grier’s neck and his limbs quivered horribly for several minutes, while Penson spun briefly and died with barely a struggle. Before the ropes were adjusted, all three men on the scaffold had joined in singing a hymn together.

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Australia Burglary Capital Punishment Execution NSW Sydney Trial

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1978: The Vatican Cover-Up That Fuelled a Poisoning Legend: the Death of Pope John Paul I

Pope John Paul I was found dead in his bed after just 33 days in office, the shortest papacy since 1605, with a religious devotional still in his hands. The Vatican initially claimed a priest had discovered the body; in truth it was a nun, Sister Vincenza, who found him, and officials lied about it out of embarrassment that a woman had entered the private papal quarters.

No autopsy was performed and the body was embalmed with unusual speed, feeding decades of speculation that he had been poisoned to stop him exposing corruption at the Vatican Bank. One theory even produced a mobster who claimed to have helped administer the poison. Later research drawing on confidential Vatican archives instead found a simpler explanation: a history of heart trouble, chest pains the night before his death, and no doctor ever called.

Castel Gandolfo Lazio Italy. Portrait of Pope John Paul I, albino luciani in the museum of the pontifical villas 11 Sep 2022 Castel Gandolfo Italy | ID 259284583 © Maudanros | Dreamstime.com — ID 259284583 © Maudanros | Dreamstime.com

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Cold Case Conspiracy Theory Death Europe Italy Scandal Vatican City

1808: The Bushranger Who Apologised Mid-Robbery, Then Hanged at Sydney

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1829: The Informer They Called Kangaroo Jack: Silenced in the Bush Near Bathurst

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1829: The Five-Pound Threshold: Two Men Hanged at Sydney for Burglary

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1978: The Vatican Cover-Up That Fuelled a Poisoning Legend: the Death of Pope John Paul I

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