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

2006: John Mark Karr Arrested in Thailand Over the JonBenet Ramsey Murder

Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her family home in Boulder, Colorado, on 26 December 1996. The case consumed the nation: her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, endured years of public suspicion, and the mystery deepened further when Patsy died of ovarian cancer in June 2006 without ever being charged.

Just two months after Patsy Ramsey’s death, John Mark Karr was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, on 16 August 2006, after confessing to the killing. The confession electrified the case. But when DNA testing was conducted, Karr’s profile did not match the unknown male DNA recovered from the crime scene. Charges were dropped, and the murder of JonBenet Ramsey remains officially unsolved.

Unsolved case

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Arrest Cold Case Murder Unsolved USA

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1992: The First Victim of the Snowtown Bodies in Barrels Killers

In August 1992, John Justin Bunting bashed the first of what would become twelve murder victims to death with a hammer at his home in Salisbury North, north of Adelaide. Bunting, a former abattoir worker filled with deep hatred, led a cell of killers that included Robert Joe Wagner and James Vlassakis, operating across South Australia between 1992 and 1999.

The murders became known as the Snowtown or Bodies in Barrels case after eight of the twelve victims were found sealed in acid-filled barrels inside an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, 140 kilometres north of Adelaide. The trial was among the longest and most publicised in Australian legal history, ending with Bunting and Wagner convicted of multiple murders and Vlassakis, who confessed to four killings and testified for the Crown, receiving a lesser sentence.

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Adelaide Australia Murder Organised Crime SA Salisbury North Serial Killer Snowtown Trial

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1820: Rebecca Worlock Hanged at Gloucester Prison for Poisoning Her Husband

Rebecca Worlock, a 37-year-old mother of three from Oldland and Bitton in Gloucestershire, poisoned her husband Thomas with arsenic in April 1820. She had purchased the poison from a pharmacy at Kingswood Hill, telling a stranger she had enlisted to accompany her that it was not for rats but for her husband. Thomas died on 21 April after falling ill following a beer laced with the substance; a post-mortem confirmed poisoning and Rebecca was arrested.

Tried at Gloucester Assizes on 14 August 1820, the jury convicted her in just seven minutes. She was hanged at Gloucester Prison two days later, on 16 August, before a large crowd that had travelled from her home villages. Her body hung for an hour before being handed over to surgeons for dissection.

Worlock confessed to the murder before her execution.

Poison

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England Execution Gloucestershire Murder Poisoning Trial UK

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1963: Henry Burnett Hanged at Craiginches Prison, the Last Execution in Scotland

On August 15, 1963, Henry John Burnett was hanged at Craiginches Prison in Aberdeen by executioner Harry Allen, becoming the last person executed in Scotland and the first in Aberdeen since 1891. His crime: the murder of merchant seaman Thomas Guyan, shot in the face at close range after Burnett broke into the Guyan family flat on May 31, 1963, furious that his lover Margaret May Guyan had chosen to return to her husband.

Burnett had become obsessively controlling of Margaret, locking her in his flat at Skene Terrace when he went out. On the day of the murder, after she announced she was returning to Thomas, Burnett stole a shotgun from his brother’s home in the Bridge of Don area of Aberdeen, boarded a bus to Jackson Terrace, and shot Guyan dead. He was tried at the High Court in Aberdeen between July 23 and 25, 1963, convicted, and executed three weeks later. A crowd of around 200 gathered outside the prison gates.

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Aberdeen Execution Murder Scotland Trial UK

2006: John Mark Karr Arrested in Thailand Over the JonBenet Ramsey Murder

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1992: The First Victim of the Snowtown Bodies in Barrels Killers

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1820: Rebecca Worlock Hanged at Gloucester Prison for Poisoning Her Husband

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1963: Henry Burnett Hanged at Craiginches Prison, the Last Execution in Scotland

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