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

John Lloyd, a ticket-of-leave convict working near Geraldton, shot his own labourer John Brown with intent to kill at Port Gregory in June 1857. Brown was himself a former convict, but only months earlier he had been granted a conditional pardon for manslaughter, finally free after years under sentence, before his own employer put a bullet in him.

Lloyd was tried and convicted that October, and hanged at Perth Gaol on this day in 1857. It was not his first brush with the gallows’ shadow: a decade earlier he had been transported for life from Wales for highway robbery, and had already served years in the colony before the shooting that finally ended his.

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Attempted Murder Australia Convict History Execution Geraldton Perth Trial WA

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Sir Walter Raleigh had already cheated the executioner once. Convicted of treason within months of Queen Elizabeth’s death, after rivals whispered that he had opposed the accession of King James, he was spared at the last moment and spent thirteen years locked in the Tower of London instead.

Released in 1616 to hunt for gold in Guiana, Raleigh promised the voyage would bring no trouble with Spain. It did: his men attacked a Spanish outpost against direct orders, the expedition found no gold, and Raleigh came home to a king eager to please Madrid and an old death sentence still on the books. It was carried out in London on 29 October 1618.

On the scaffold he asked to examine the axe himself, running a thumb along the blade before remarking, “This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician that will cure all diseases.”

Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned in the Tower of London by Henry Wallis

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Europe Execution London Political Crime Scandal Treason UK

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Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot President William McKinley at point-blank range during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, on 6 September 1901. McKinley initially seemed to be recovering from his wounds, giving doctors and the public hope, but he died eight days later.

Czolgosz was swiftly tried and convicted of the killing. He was electrocuted on this day in 1901, one of the clearest and most public reckonings in the history of presidential assassinations in the United States.

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Assassination Execution Political Crime USA

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Lindy Chamberlain said a dingo had carried her baby daughter Azaria from the family’s tent near Ayers Rock in August 1980. Few believed her. The claim became a national punchline, pored over in tabloids and dinner table arguments alike, and police built a case on bloodstains in the family car and a mother’s supposedly too-calm demeanour.

She was convicted of murder on this day in 1982 and sentenced to life with hard labour, while her husband was convicted as an accessory. The trial turned almost entirely on forensic evidence that would later unravel.

More than three years after her conviction, searchers looking for the remains of a tourist who had fallen from Uluru discovered Azaria’s missing matinee jacket, partially buried near a dingo lair. Lindy Chamberlain had always insisted her daughter was wearing the jacket when she disappeared, a claim prosecutors had dismissed as a fabrication.

Her conviction was quashed in 1988, and she was formally exonerated, a dingo had taken her baby after all.

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Australia Exoneration Murder NT Trial Wrongful Conviction

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