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

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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1898: Executed as Reform Martyrs, But Were They Assassins? The Beheading of Six Gentlemen in Beijing

When Empress Dowager Cixi crushed the Hundred Days’ Reform with a palace coup in September 1898, she moved fast. Six officials and intellectuals who had championed the Guangxu Emperor’s modernisation drive, among them Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei’s younger brother Kang Guangren, were arrested, denied any trial, and beheaded the same day at the Caishikou execution ground in Beijing. For decades they were remembered simply as reform martyrs cut down by a reactionary court.

That story only cracked in the 1980s, when testimony surfaced in Japanese archives from a man who had been ordered to assassinate Cixi and fled before he could act. His account implicated four of the six in a genuine plot to kill the Empress Dowager, suggesting at least one of the condemned, Yang Rui, may have been entirely innocent, executed alongside men who really had been plotting murder.

Historic photo of beheaded bodies after execution: Laneway of Caishikou crossroad, Beijing, China.

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Asia Assassination Beijing China Execution Political Crime Trial

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1803: Bribery Couldn’t Save Them: Two Men Hanged at Castle Hill for a Hawkesbury Robbery

On 27 September 1803, John Lynch and James Tracey were hanged at Castle Hill for a violent robbery at the Hawkesbury home of Samuel and Elizabeth Phelps. Five men had entered the house on the evening of 24 July, knocked Samuel down and bound both husband and wife before stealing money, watches, clothing and other property. Before leaving, they stripped two gold rings from Elizabeth’s fingers.

The following morning, Lynch gave a labourer a bundle of stolen papers to hold, warning him not to show anyone. When he delayed returning them, he was offered silver teaspoons and then a watch. He accepted the items but kept the papers, eventually informing the authorities and producing evidence that linked Lynch to the robbery.

Both men were convicted and sentenced to death. At the Castle Hill gallows in Sydney, Lynch admitted his guilt and urged the spectators to take warning from his fate. Tracey continued to deny involvement and interrupted Lynch’s final address before the two were hanged.

Vintage pocket watch, fountain pen and spoons on a table

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Australia Castle Hill Colonial Crime Execution Hawkesbury Home Invasion NSW Robbery Trial

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1964: The Warren Commission Declares Lee Harvey Oswald the Lone Gunman in the Kennedy Assassination

On September 27, 1964, the Warren Commission delivered its report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, concluding after a ten month inquiry that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in firing the shots that killed the president in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

The commission, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren and formed by executive order of President Lyndon Johnson, found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, and determined that Jack Ruby likewise acted alone when he shot Oswald dead two days after the assassination while Oswald was in police custody.

The report’s single bullet theory, used to explain the wounds suffered by both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally from one shot, became the most disputed element of the findings and fueled decades of public skepticism and rival conspiracy theories that persist to this day.

Lee Harvey Oswald Mural, Bishop Arts District, Dallas, Texas. Pictured is a mural on the side of the Members Only barber shop in the Bishop Arts District, Dallas, Texas. It features Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated president John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He was arrested a short time later in the Texas Movie Theatre in Oak Cliff. It was painted by renowned Dallas muralist, Theo Ponchaveli. The Bishop Arts District is a small shopping and entertainment district in north Oak Cliff, immediately southwest of Downtown Dallas. It was originally developed as warehouses and shops in the 1920s. | ID 112938931 © David Pillow | Dreamstime.com — ID 112938931 © David Pillow | Dreamstime.com

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Assassination Cold Case Political Crime Trial USA

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

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1898: Executed as Reform Martyrs, But Were They Assassins? The Beheading of Six Gentlemen in Beijing

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1803: Bribery Couldn’t Save Them: Two Men Hanged at Castle Hill for a Hawkesbury Robbery

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1964: The Warren Commission Declares Lee Harvey Oswald the Lone Gunman in the Kennedy Assassination

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