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

1572: The Red Wedding in St Bartholomew

On August 18, 1572, Protestant Henry of Navarre married Catholic Margaret of Valois in Paris, a union designed to end the bloody civil war between France’s Catholics and Huguenots. The peace did not hold. Just days later, on August 24, King Charles IX, acting under the influence of Catherine de’ Medici, authorised a wave of targeted killings against Protestant leaders in Paris.

What began as a series of assassinations spread into mass mob violence across France. Estimates of the death toll range from thousands to as many as 50,000, as Catholic mobs hunted down Huguenots in city after city. The wedding that was meant to unite a fractured nation had become the prelude to one of the worst religious massacres in European history.

Blood-soaked bride in lingerie holding knife lying on floor

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Assassination Europe France Massacre Paris Political Crime Religious Persecution

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1922: Cecil Hides a Body in his Bath

Cecil Maltby, a 47-year-old London tailor with a taste for gambling and drink, shot his mistress Alice Hilda Middleton three times in the back at his flat above his shop at 24 Park Road, Regent’s Park, on 24 August 1922. He concealed her decomposing body in a bath in the kitchen, wrapped in a sheet with a note claiming she had committed suicide. Her husband, returning from service with the Merchant Navy in the Far East, reported her missing in December 1922, prompting police to watch the premises.

When authorities finally forced entry on 10 January 1923, using a health order citing unsanitary conditions, officers heard a shot from the bedroom. Maltby had put a gun to his mouth and died within minutes. The pathologist’s report demolished his suicide narrative: Middleton had been shot three times from behind. A coroner’s jury returned a verdict of murder against Maltby, finding that he had then taken his own life to avoid arrest.

Bathtub filled with blood in a horror crime scene concept

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Concealment of Body London Murder Suicide UK

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1939: The Last Judicial Execution in New South Wales History

John Trevor Kelly, 24, was hanged at Long Bay Gaol near Botany Bay, Sydney, shortly after eight in the morning of 24 August 1939. He had been convicted of the axe murder of Marjorie Constance Sommerlad at Hillcrest farm near Tenterfield, where he had been working alongside her and her brother Eric. During the attack, Kelly also struck Eric Sommerlad with the same axe, though Eric survived. Appeals to the Court of Criminal Appeals and the High Court both failed.

Kelly became the last person judicially executed in New South Wales. His father, a well-known figure in Lismore and northern New South Wales, mounted a public appeal arguing that other killers had received commuted sentences, and that his son had no control of himself when drinking. Authorities refused to intervene.

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Australia Execution Malabar Murder NSW Sydney Tenterfield Trial

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1853: John Smith Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of a Miner at Fryer’s Creek

In 1853, John Smith and Henry Turner forced their way into the hut of John Warren at Fryer’s Creek, demanding gold. When Warren could not produce it, the pair shot him in the eye with a revolver at close range. Warren was found blind and bleeding, groping through the bush. He died shortly after, the bullet having shattered a fragment of his temporal bone into the brain.

Both men were tried, convicted, and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 23 August 1853, before a large crowd assembled outside the walls.

Smith, attended by Catholic priests in his final days, was brought to acknowledge that the sentence he was about to suffer was just and merited.