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

Michael Marshall was gunned down outside his luxury home in South Yarra, shot four times in the head in front of his five-year-old son on this day in 2003. The hit was part of the gangland war that tore through Melbourne underworld circles through the early 2000s.

Carl Williams ordered the killing, but the real twist was the setup behind it: Williams had first framed Marshall for the murder of Willie Thompson, manufacturing a motive and a target in one stroke. Victor Brincat and Thomas Hentschel carried out the shooting and were later convicted of Marshall’s murder, two more names drawn into a war where loyalty counted for nothing and innocence was no defence.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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Australia Gang Melbourne Murder Organised Crime Trial VIC

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Captain Henry Townley Wright refused to hand command of the gunboat Gayundah to his second officer, Lieutenant Francis Taylor, and had him arrested instead, declaring the vessel under Royal Navy authority rather than the Queensland government. He threatened to train the ship’s guns on the Parliament building overlooking the Brisbane River while loading coal and three months of supplies, apparently preparing to sail for Sydney rather than be dismissed over a long running dispute about unauthorised spending of public funds.

On this day in 1888, the Colonial Secretary sent the Police Commissioner and twenty armed constables to retake the ship, drawing a crowd of two thousand onlookers to the riverbank. After a tense standoff, Wright accepted defeat. He wrote a formal letter of protest, read it aloud on deck, released Taylor from arrest, then calmly borrowed a light for a cigarette from a bystander before stepping ashore under police escort.

HMQS Gayundah Queensland Navy flagship in 1890

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Australia Brisbane Corruption Mutiny Naval History QLD Scandal

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Danny Rolling earned the name the Gainesville Ripper after a four day rampage through student housing near the University of Florida in August 1990 left five young people dead. He mutilated and deliberately posed his victims, severing one woman’s head and placing it to face anyone who walked into the room. Police initially chased the wrong man, a troubled student named Edward Humphrey, whose grandmother collapsed and died on her own doorstep while fending off a reporter during the hunt.

Rolling later claimed an alter personality called Gemini had driven him to kill, a story investigators quickly dismissed after learning he had watched a film featuring a killer of that exact name days earlier. He pleaded guilty before trial and was sentenced to death. On this day in 2006 he was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison, having eaten a last meal of lobster tail and sung a gospel hymn.

Shortly before his execution Rolling handed authorities a written confession admitting to an earlier unsolved triple murder in Shreveport, Louisiana, but made no final statement on the gurney itself.

Gainesville, FL, USA - May 11, 2016: An entrance to the University of Florida. The University of Florida is a public research university located in Gainesville, Florida. | ID 76208519 © Wellesenterprises | Dreamstime.com — ID 76208519 © Wellesenterprises | Dreamstime.com

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Walter Edward Gordon was a woolshed hand on Darr River Downs station near Muttaburra when fever took hold of him in 1885. He begged station manager Walter Dunning to send him to hospital, but Dunning refused, warning that if he took one sick man in he would have fifty more lining up behind him. The night before the killing, Gordon was overheard muttering that he would shoot him.

On 2 May he walked into the station office, placed a revolver to Dunning’s back as he sat writing, and fired. Dunning died within minutes, saying only “Good-bye George” to his brother before blood filled his throat. At trial Gordon’s counsel argued the fever had left him delirious and not responsible for his actions, but a doctor testified he had acted with full awareness, and the jury convicted him, though they recommended mercy given his poor health. He was hanged in Brisbane on this day in 1885.

On the scaffold Gordon struggled against the hood, insisting he wanted to speak. “I am innocent of the murder of that gentleman. I conscientiously,” he began, before his voice failed him entirely.

Portrait of Walter Gordon: Queensland State Archives, Item ID ITM2947

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Australia Brisbane Execution Murder QLD Rockhampton Trial

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