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

1986: Patrick Sherrill Kills 14 at Oklahoma Post Office, Coining a Dark New Phrase

On August 20, 1986, part-time mail carrier Patrick Sherrill walked into the post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, and opened fire on his colleagues, shooting 20 people and killing 14 before turning the gun on himself. It was the first mass shooting by an individual in a US office workplace environment, and it sent shockwaves through American working life.

The massacre gave rise to the phrase ‘going postal’, a term for sudden, explosive workplace rage. Between 1970 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed by current or former postal employees in at least 20 separate incidents, cementing the phrase in the English vocabulary.

Going Postal

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Mass Shooting Murder USA Workplace Crime

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1692: Five Hanged at Salem in a Single Day for Witchcraft

On 19 August 1692, five people were executed by hanging at Salem, Massachusetts, after being convicted of witchcraft: Martha Carrier, George Jacobs Sr., George Burroughs, John Willard, and John Proctor. The executions were among the most notorious of the Salem witch trials, a period of mass hysteria that gripped colonial New England.

Fourteen more people would be executed before the year was out, and 150 others were imprisoned. The Salem trials remain one of the darkest episodes in early American legal history.

Painting of two alleged witches being tried in Salem, Massachusetts as part of the infamous witchhunts.

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Execution Historical Atrocity Massachusetts New England Political Crime Salem Trial USA

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1878: Sam Ah Poo Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Axe Murder of a Drover

On the evening of 24 April 1878, drover J. Fisher McMichael was washing himself at a camp near Bundaberg when Sam Ah Poo, the cook on his droving run, struck him from behind with an axe. The blow opened a gash four inches long beside the backbone. As McMichael fell, Ah Poo swung twice more, shouting ‘I killoo you now, you no killeemo.’ McMichael survived only four hours. One of the drovers wrestled Ah Poo to the ground; when bound, Ah Poo appeared entirely calm, described by a witness as like one who had got a load off his mind.

Tried at the Toowoomba Winter Assizes on 22 July 1878 before Justice Lilley, Ah Poo’s defence argued insanity and delusion. The jury disagreed, returning a guilty verdict after thirty minutes. On the morning of 19 August 1878, Ah Poo walked to the scaffold at Toowoomba Gaol with firm steps, requiring little support from the warders. The bolt was drawn at eight o’clock and death followed almost instantaneously.

Stockman on horseback droving cattle along dusty dirt road

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Australia Brisbane Bundaberg Execution Murder QLD Toowoomba Trial

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1865: John Wesley Hardin Gunned Down in an El Paso Saloon

John Wesley Hardin was one of the most feared gunfighters of the American Old West. Born in Texas in 1853 to a Methodist preacher, he killed his first man at 15 and spent the following decade evading lawmen across the South. Sentenced to 24 years for murder in 1877, Hardin claimed to have killed 42 men, though historians estimate the true figure exceeded 20. He studied law in prison and wrote a self-aggrandising autobiography, widely noted for its exaggerations.

Within a year of his 1894 release, Hardin was shot dead by constable John Selman in the Acme Saloon in El Paso. Hardin had been gambling, rolling dice at the bar, and his last words were reportedly “Four sixes to beat.” Moments later, Selman walked up behind him and shot him in the head. Hardin was 42 years old.

Portrait of outlaw John Wesley Hardin

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Gang Murder Organised Crime Prison Trial USA

1986: Patrick Sherrill Kills 14 at Oklahoma Post Office, Coining a Dark New Phrase

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1692: Five Hanged at Salem in a Single Day for Witchcraft

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1878: Sam Ah Poo Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Axe Murder of a Drover

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1865: John Wesley Hardin Gunned Down in an El Paso Saloon

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