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

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.

Son of Sam Claims His First Victim in the Bronx

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Murder New York Serial Killer USA

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1791: James Chapman Hanged in Sydney for Burglary One Day After Sentencing

James Chapman arrived in New South Wales in June 1790 aboard a Second Fleet vessel, already a convicted burglar who had stolen fowls from a Hampshire farm in 1787 and been reprieved from death in exchange for transportation for life. Working as a labourer at Parramatta, he lasted barely a year before again crossing into crime, breaking and entering the home of John Petrie in July 1791 and stealing clothing and other goods, with additional charges relating to property belonging to John Medcalf.

Chapman pleaded guilty before the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction on 19 July 1791 and was sentenced to death. He was hanged in Sydney the following day, aged around 29. A man named Joseph Hatton, charged with receiving the stolen goods, was sentenced to 500 or 800 lashes.

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Australia Burglary Colonial Crime Execution NSW Parramatta Prison Robbery Sydney Theft

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1835: The Infernal Machine: Fieschi’s 25-Barrel Assassination Attempt on King Louis Philippe I

On 28 July 1835, Giuseppe Marco Fieschi fired a homemade 25-barrel volley gun, dubbed the ‘infernal machine’, from a third-floor window at 50 Boulevard du Temple in Paris, directly into the convoy of King Louis Philippe I of France. The weapon unleashed around 400 projectiles in a single volley; the king escaped with only a graze to the forehead, but 18 people were killed and 22 more wounded, at least four of whom had limbs amputated.

The gun’s design proved its own undoing: French artillery officers later concluded that if Fieschi had understood ballistics well enough to angle the barrels so they diverged and crossed, he could have killed up to 200 additional people and destroyed the king entirely. Instead, the parallel configuration limited the carnage. Fieschi himself was badly wounded when several barrels burst; he fled but was tracked by a trail of blood and captured shortly after.

Illustration of an assassination attempt on a king

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Assassination Europe France Paris Political Crime Trial

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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 of Robespierre during revolutionary unrest

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Europe Execution France Political Crime Revolution

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

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1791: James Chapman Hanged in Sydney for Burglary One Day After Sentencing

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1835: The Infernal Machine: Fieschi’s 25-Barrel Assassination Attempt on King Louis Philippe I

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

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