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

In Montreal in October 1970, armed members of the Front de Liberation du Quebec forced their way into the home of British trade commissioner James Cross and seized him at gunpoint, demanding the release of jailed militants in exchange for his life.

The kidnapping tipped Quebec into what became known as the October Crisis. Days later a second cell abducted and killed a provincial cabinet minister, and the federal government responded by invoking the War Measures Act, suspending civil liberties and deploying troops onto Canadian streets for the first time in peacetime history. Cross himself was held for weeks before his captors negotiated safe passage to Cuba in return for his release.

Riders on horseback wear red uniforms and carry flags as they participate in the Calgary Stampede Parade. The event showcases a vibrant display of local pride and community spirit. 07. 2023 - Calgary, Canada. | ID 460635341 © Kukotaekaterina | Dreamstime.com — ID 460635341 © Kukotaekaterina | Dreamstime.com

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Canada Kidnapping Montreal Political Crime Quebec Terrorism

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Henry Howard ran the Frankston Hotel, near Melbourne, in partnership with widowed licensee Elizabeth Wright. When she hired a barman named Thomas Harman to keep an eye on the books, Howard convinced himself the pair were lovers, though Harman had a wife of his own and, as the judge later noted, there was no evidence of any affair. On the night the hotel’s contents were sold off, Howard stabbed Wright to death with a freshly sharpened butcher’s knife, then killed Harman as he ran to her screams.

He was found sitting calmly beside Wright’s body with the bloody knife at his feet, and when told Harman had also died, witnesses said he smiled. Arrested on the spot, he told police only, “Prove it.” At his trial his single explanation was, “I come from a race that will not take an insult, even if it brings them to the gallows.” He was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 4 October 1875, the hangman’s badly set noose leaving him convulsing for several minutes before he died.

On the scaffold he confessed to murdering Wright but insisted he had never meant to kill Harman.

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Australia Execution Frankston Melbourne Murder Trial VIC

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Henry Needle was a robust carpenter until 1889, when he began suffering violent, unexplained vomiting at the family home in Richmond, near Melbourne. His doctor once found untouched broth and jelly by his bed, and noted Henry had grown strangely wary of food prepared by his wife, Martha. He died on 4 October 1889; his death was recorded as hepatitis, no post-mortem was ordered, and no suspicion touched the devoted nurse at his side.

The truth emerged five years later, after police caught Martha handing a laced cup of tea to another man and Henry’s body was exhumed and found packed with arsenic, along with the bodies of the couple’s three young children, all of whom had died in her care under equally mysterious circumstances. Martha Needle was hanged at Melbourne Gaol in October 1894 for the poisoning of her fiance’s brother, the last of at least five family members she is believed to have killed.

Martha Needle: Public Record Office Victoria, VPRS 516/P0000, Central Register of Female Prisoners, register nos. 5926–6415 (1891–1896).

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Australia Execution Melbourne Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial VIC

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Henry Facey Hurst, the pioneer settler after whom Hurstbridge in Victoria was later named, was feeding a hungry stranger at his station near Diamond Creek on the morning of 4 October 1866 when his sister spotted a revolver hidden under the man’s coat. Hurst quietly loaded his own gun and confronted him. Offended at what he called an insult, the stranger leapt up and announced, “I am a bushranger”: Robert Burke. Burke tried to fire first, but the cap misfired; Hurst got his shot away, and Burke then fired three rounds of his own, one tearing into Hurst’s stomach and lodging in his own leg.

Though mortally wounded, Hurst clung to Burke until a friend, Joseph Abbott, wrestled the bushranger down and tied him with a halter. Hurst bled to death that evening. Burke was convicted of wilful murder, though the jury recommended mercy on the grounds that Hurst had fired the first shot. He was hanged at Melbourne Gaol.

The late Henry Facey Hurst, engraving by Samuel Calvert, 27 October 1866. State Library Victoria, IMP27/10/66/356.

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Australia Bushranger Execution Hurstbridge Melbourne Murder Trial VIC

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