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

Edgar Allan Poe vanished for nearly a week before he turned up outside a Baltimore, Maryland tavern being used as a polling place, incoherent and wearing clothes that were not his own. He was taken to Washington College Hospital, where he drifted in and out of consciousness for four days.

Witnesses said he repeatedly called out the name Reynolds in his final hours, a man no one has ever identified. Poe died on 3 October 1849 at age 40, and no doctor ever agreed on what killed him, leaving one of American literature’s most famous authors with one of its strangest unsolved endings.

Restored portrait photo of Edgar Allan Poe circa 1849

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Baltimore Death Literary History Maryland Mystery Unsolved USA

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In July 1960, nine-year-old Graeme Thorne was snatched from a street in Sydney‘s Bondi, Australia’s first known kidnap for ransom case, and murdered within a day. His body turned up six weeks later at Seaforth, wrapped in a picnic blanket that would ultimately betray his killer.

Forensic scientists traced the rare blanket through its manufacturer, dyed Pekingese hairs, two uncommon tree species and flecks of pink mortar to a house at Clontarf owned by Hungarian immigrant Stephen Bradley. By the time police called on 3 October, Bradley had already sailed for England; he was arrested when his ship reached Ceylon and extradited to stand trial. He claimed the boy had simply suffocated in his car boot, a story investigators demolished by rigging a breathing mask to the same boot and drawing air from it for seven hours straight.

Bradley pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted the kidnapping and had earlier signed a confession he later retracted. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in custody seven years later.

Sydney Opera House under construction in 1963.

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Australia England Extradition Forensic Science Kidnapping Murder NSW Sri Lanka Sydney Trial

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Within hours of his execution, the body of bushranger George Melville was handed to his widow, decorated with ribbons and laid out in the window of their oyster shop in Little Bourke Street. The Argus called it a disgusting and inhuman act, presuming it was staged simply to draw in customers.

Melville had been hanged at Melbourne Gaol alongside William Atkins and George Wilson for the Private Escort gold robbery near Kalkallo, an ambush that left four mounted troopers shot, one of them fired on again as he lay wounded on the road. All three had been identified after an accomplice turned informer to the police before taking his own life with a razor.

None of the condemned made a clear confession. Wilson used his final moments on the scaffold to forgive the witnesses who had convicted him, while Melville, claiming the crowd could not hear him, simply said he could not make himself heard and wished them all a very good morning.

Victorian gold escort arriving in Melbourne 1852.

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Australia Bushranger Execution Melbourne Murder Robbery Trial VIC

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On Warland’s Range near Murrurundi in April 1863, a masked rider named Henry Wilson held up a party of drovers and stripped young Peter Clarke of his watch and chain. When Clarke lunged at him, Wilson shot him three times; Clarke was dead within minutes. So furious was the crowd that gathered at the scene that police had to physically stop them from hanging Wilson on the nearest tree.

He was tried instead at Maitland Circuit Court, where his counsel argued the fatal shot had gone off accidentally in the struggle. The jury took ten minutes to convict him, and he was hanged at East Maitland Gaol on 2 October 1863. Clarke’s bravery was later honoured with a public monument erected on the spot where he fell.

Wilson admitted firing the shots but denied meaning to kill, blaming drink and panic in the scuffle; still, he told his priest he accepted the justice of his sentence and deserved to die.

Peter Clarke monument, Warland’s Range, near Blandford, NSW. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, At Work and Play - 05492. — Peter Clarke monument, Warland’s Range, near Blandford, NSW. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, At Work and Play – 05492.

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Australia Bushranging Execution Maitland Murder Murrurundi NSW Robbery Trial

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