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

1860: Edward Fenlow Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for a Prospecting Partner's Murder

Edward Fenlow, a small, mild-mannered man known also as Reynolds, stood trial at the Castlemaine Circuit Court in August 1860 for the murder of his prospecting mate George Plummer Gardner at Inglewood on 27 March that year. The two men had been working together when Fenlow persuaded Gardner to descend into a mining hole, then struck him on the head with a shovel. Gardner was found the next day with a hole in his skull the size of a crown-piece. Fenlow robbed the body and evaded capture for several weeks before witnesses, including a refreshment tent keeper who recognised him on sight, placed him with the victim in the days before the killing.

Convicted on the evidence of multiple witnesses, Fenlow was sentenced to death and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 20 August 1860.

Gold prospector resting with grain texture vintage style

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Australia Castlemaine Execution Inglewood Melbourne Murder Trial VIC

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1878: Sam Ah Poo Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Axe Murder of a Drover

On the evening of 24 April 1878, drover J. Fisher McMichael was washing himself at a camp near Bundaberg when Sam Ah Poo, the cook on his droving run, struck him from behind with an axe. The blow opened a gash four inches long beside the backbone. As McMichael fell, Ah Poo swung twice more, shouting ‘I killoo you now, you no killeemo.’ McMichael survived only four hours. One of the drovers wrestled Ah Poo to the ground; when bound, Ah Poo appeared entirely calm, described by a witness as like one who had got a load off his mind.

Tried at the Toowoomba Winter Assizes on 22 July 1878 before Justice Lilley, Ah Poo’s defence argued insanity and delusion. The jury disagreed, returning a guilty verdict after thirty minutes. On the morning of 19 August 1878, Ah Poo walked to the scaffold at Toowoomba Gaol with firm steps, requiring little support from the warders. The bolt was drawn at eight o’clock and death followed almost instantaneously.

Stockman on horseback droving cattle along dusty dirt road

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Australia Brisbane Bundaberg Execution Murder QLD Toowoomba Trial

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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

1860: Edward Fenlow Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for a Prospecting Partner's Murder

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1878: Sam Ah Poo Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Axe Murder of a Drover

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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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