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

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

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On September 27, 1969, at about 6.30 pm, the Zodiac Killer attacked Bryan Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Shepard, 22, as they picnicked at Lake Berryessa in Napa County, California. He wore a black hooded costume marked with his crosshair symbol and, breaking from the shootings of his earlier attacks, stabbed both victims repeatedly. Hartnell survived; Shepard died two days later.

Before leaving, the killer used a black felt-tip pen to draw his crosshair signature on Hartnell’s car door, then listed beneath it the dates and locations of his previous attacks: Vallejo, 12-20-68, 7-4-69, and the day’s own assault, 6:30, by knife. The first date referred to the killing of David Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, on Lake Herman Road, and the second to the shooting of Michael Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22, in a Vallejo park, where Mageau survived and Ferrin died.

The note tied all three attacks together in the killer’s own hand at the scene, before any letter to police or press had been sent. He then drove roughly 27 miles to a car wash in downtown Napa and, from a payphone, calmly called the Napa County Sheriff’s Department himself at 7.40 pm to report the crime.

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California Cold Case Murder Serial Killer Unsolved USA

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Joseph Samuel was condemned to hang in 1803 for a robbery tied to the murder of Constable Luker in Sydney. On the scaffold, the rope snapped clean in the middle the instant the cart was drawn away, dropping him unconscious to the ground.

Officials dragged his limp body back onto the cart and fitted a second rope, only for it to unravel entirely, lowering him so slowly that his legs trailed on the ground while he half hung there. The assembled crowd was horrified by the spectacle as a third rope was rigged and this one snapped again, close against his neck, as the body was lowered.

With the crowd unnerved and three ropes failed in a row, Governor King, took the repeated failures as a sign of divine intervention and granted Samuel a reprieve. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was nursed back to health and eventually to sanity.

After his reprieve, Samuel remained a convict. In April 1806, he made an escape attempt from Newcastle with seven other convicts in a small boat. All were presumed drowned in a storm, less than three years after he had survived three attempts to hang him.

Joseph Samuels hanging attempt rope snaps three times in 1803 Sydney

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Australia Execution Murder NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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David Bennett spoke from the gallows for nine minutes, the longest statement ever made by a condemned man in Victoria. The 59-year-old painter and carpenter had walked to the scaffold calmly, and he spoke in a clear, steady voice. He was hanged in Melbourne for a capital assault committed in July 1932, the first execution in Victoria since 1924 and the first since 1891 for any crime other than murder. It was not his first such conviction. In Western Australia in 1911 he had been sentenced to life imprisonment and a flogging by a judge who told him: “You are not fit to live in this world.” He served just three years in Fremantle Gaol before the Attorney-General released him on legal doubts about the conviction, causing an outcry unprecedented in the state. Bennett moved east, and in 1930 he came forward to Melbourne detectives with information about a notorious unsolved murder. A man was arrested on his word, and was later found to be innocent. Bennett admitted nothing. He claimed his defence had never been properly put to the jury, and ended: “I repeat that I am not guilty, and again ask forgiveness from those whom I have wronged as I forgive those who have wronged me. Good-bye.”

An Unspeakable Degenerate - CeVPRS 1100/P0002, David Bennett — An Unspeakable Degenerate – CeVPRS 1100/P0002, David Bennett

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Assault Australia Crime Against Children Execution Melbourne Miscarriage of Justice Trial VIC WA

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