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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At about one o’clock on the morning of 27 September 1869, Sheriff “Wild Bill” Hickok and his deputy responded to a disturbance at John Bitter’s Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas. A cowboy named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken companions were reportedly damaging the saloon. During the confrontation, Strawhun made remarks against Hickok, who shot him through the head, killing him.

Hickok maintained that he had been trying to restore order. Despite conflicting witness accounts, a jury at the coroner’s inquest ruled the shooting justifiable. Strawhun was the second man Hickok had killed during his first month as sheriff.

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Kansas Law Enforcement Murder Old West Shooting Trial USA

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Frank Horrocks was barely 17, the son of a senior Queensland civil servant and only a year out of grammar school in Brisbane, when he was charged with murder. As police carted the body of his victim to the morgue, Horrocks was reportedly standing at a road junction, watching it pass. Rudolph Weissmuller, 20, was a newly arrived immigrant looking for bush work, and Horrocks was the only fellow lodger he confided in. In April 1892 the pair left their boarding house together; only Horrocks came back, and he slipped away that night without paying his board. The body was found in the bush beside a small tomahawk, the twin of one Horrocks had bought the day before. He gave a false name when arrested, which proved useless: the detective sent to collect him had known him since he was a little boy. Pleas for mercy on the grounds of his youth and unsound mind were refused. Several hundred people, some with infants in their arms, gathered outside the gaol on the morning of the execution. Horrocks had slept soundly and eaten a hearty breakfast, stood “steady as a rock” on the scaffold and never spoke. On his arrest he had insisted “I did not kill him”, but before the end he sent a confession to the Governor, admitting the deed and the justice of his sentence.

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Australia Brisbane Execution Murder QLD Trial

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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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