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

Augustin De Kitchilan, a young drifter from Ceylon, had been living and working at Leah Fouracre’s isolated farm near Waroona, Western Australia, breaking in her horses in exchange for board. When Fouracre disappeared in mid August 1907, her farmhouse was found burnt to the ground with her charred remains inside, while De Kitchilan was soon found riding her horse and pawning her jewellery across the district. Convicted of her murder after a trial in Perth, he was hanged at Fremantle Prison on 23 October 1907. In his final days he wrote what he titled ‘my last confession’, a rambling letter to the public that never actually admitted guilt, instead taunting readers in verse to guess who had pulled the trigger if not him. De Kitchilan denied the murder to the end, declaring at his sentencing, ‘I absolutely deny the committal of the dirty crime with which I am charged.’

Kitchilan's Execution for the Peppermint Farm Murder : Illustration 1907 — Kitchilan’s Execution for the Peppermint Farm Murder : Illustration 1907

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Arson Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Trial WA Waroona

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Kenneth Bianchi confessed to being the Hillside Strangler, but he did not go down alone. To save himself, he named his older cousin, Angelo Buono, as his accomplice, and on this day in 1979 Buono was arrested in Los Angeles.

The betrayal inverted everything investigators assumed about the case. It was Buono, not Bianchi, who turned out to be the predatory sexual sadist and driving force behind their partnership, having first drawn his younger cousin into crime years earlier by suggesting they go into business together as pimps. That shared criminal history curdled into a killing spree, and when the pressure of capture came, it was Bianchi who broke family loyalty to shift the blame onto the man who had led him there.

Hillside Strangler: Aerial view of rush hour traffic on the 101 Ventura Freeway

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Arrest Los Angeles Murder Serial Killer Trial USA

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When lookouts aboard HMS Dido spotted flames rising from a home near Auckland on 22 October 1847, sailors raced ashore to find Lieutenant Robert Snow, his wife Hannah and their young daughter Mary butchered, with flesh cut from each body and the house set alight. The staging was deliberate: ship’s carpenter Joseph Burns had mutilated the family to make the killings look like a Maori attack, hoping to steal the twelve pounds in naval pay kept in the house and spark fears of an uprising that gripped Auckland for weeks.

With Maori leaders unable to produce a culprit, suspicion only turned to Burns after he coerced his partner, Margaret Reardon, into backing a false confession blaming two innocent neighbours. Mid trial, word reached the court that Burns had cut his own throat in a failed suicide attempt, and in its aftermath he retracted the accusation. Reardon then testified against him, and Burns was convicted and hanged the following June, becoming the first European executed in New Zealand.

Burns went to the gallows having made a full confession, though it unfairly implicated Reardon, who was later convicted of perjury and transported to Tasmania.

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Arson Auckland Execution Murder New Zealand Perjury Trial

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A brutal ambush in the shadow of the gaol wall left young William Hickey beaten unconscious, his skull cut open and his jaw broken, in a robbery that netted his attackers little more than a hat, a pair of shoes and twenty shillings. The alarm was raised by a publican’s son who watched the assault from his doorway, and constables chased two fleeing men through the streets of Sydney, catching George Williams yards away still clutching a stone to hurl at his pursuer.

At trial Williams protested his innocence in a written defence, pointing out that Hickey could never identify his attacker’s face, only the stolen hat and shoes dropped mid flight. The jury convicted him regardless, and he was publicly hanged in Sydney on 22 October 1829, meeting his end, witnesses said, with calm and reverent composure.

Lower George Street Sydney street scene 1828

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Australia Execution NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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