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

Robert Francis Burns walked out of a Melbourne courtroom in August 1882 an acquitted man, and was arrested for a different murder before he had left the building. The first charge concerned a fellow railway navvy, last seen heading off with Burns and a gallon of whiskey. A headless body was found in the bush, but the Crown could not prove whose it was.

The second charge held. Michael Quinlivan, “a quiet saving man”, had been great mates with Burns, the only two Irishmen in their work gang. In June 1880 he withdrew 15 pounds from the bank, left a roadside hotel with Burns and was never seen alive again. Weeks later his body was found in a sheep paddock with a fractured skull.

The first jury could not agree after more than six hours; the second convicted in 45 minutes. On the gallows at Ararat Gaol, before about 30 spectators, the hangman was visibly nervous, and Burns plunged into eternity without any final words. Instead, he left a written statement thanking his gaolers, his lawyers and his priest, and admitting nothing.

Afterwards the hangman swore that as he pinioned the prisoner, Burns murmured: “I have cooked eight, five in Victoria and three in Sydney, and now you are going to cook me.”

Robert Francis Burns Mugshot: VPRS 515/P0000, Central Register for Male Prisoners 19384 - 19880 — Robert Francis Burns Mugshot: VPRS 515/P0000, Central Register for Male Prisoners 19384 – 19880

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Australia Execution Murder NSW Serial Killer Trial VIC

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On 25 September 1983, 38 IRA prisoners staged a mass breakout from the Maze Prison in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the largest prison escape in British history. The men overpowered guards inside H-Block 7, some using smuggled handguns, and seized control of the wing before storming the front gate disguised in stolen prison officer uniforms.

In the chaos one prison officer was stabbed to death and twenty others were injured during the breakout. Several escapees hijacked a delivery lorry to get beyond the perimeter fences, and while a number were recaptured within days, others evaded capture for years, some fleeing abroad before eventually being caught or negotiating their return.

The escape became known among Irish republicans as the Great Escape, a name that stuck for decades and turned the breakout into one of the defining episodes of the Troubles.

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County Antrim Escape Northern Ireland Political Crime Prison Terrorism UK

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After 24 years, the case that haunted Perth came down to a single judge and a 619-page verdict. Bradley Edwards, a 51-year-old former Telstra technician, was found guilty of two of the three Claremont murders and not guilty of the third.

All three women vanished after nights out in Claremont, then one of the busiest nightspots in the city. Sarah Spiers, 18, called a taxi from a phone booth at 2.06 am in January 1996; when it arrived three minutes later, she was gone. Her remains have never been found, and although Edwards was acquitted of her murder, the judge found it more likely than not that he was involved in her disappearance. Jane Rimmer, a 23-year-old childcare worker, was last seen on security footage that June and was found 55 days later in bushland by a family picking wildflowers. Ciara Glennon, a 27-year-old lawyer, disappeared in March 1997 and was found 19 days later in scrub north of the city.

The hunt became the biggest, longest and most expensive investigation in Western Australian history. Thousands of taxi drivers were fingerprinted and DNA tested, 110 “persons of interest” were sent a questionnaire asking “Are you the killer?”, and a public servant was pursued as the prime suspect for a decade before being cleared.

Edwards had no known link to the case until his arrest in December 2016. DNA found under the fingernails of his final victim matched a kimono dropped by an intruder fleeing a suburban house in 1988, and fibres on both bodies matched the Telstra-issue station wagon he drove at the time. Tried without a jury over seven months and more than 200 witnesses, he was sentenced to life with a 40-year minimum, the judge noting a “high likelihood” that he would die in prison.

Telephone booth at night with interior lights

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Australia Cold Case Missing Person Murder Perth Serial Killer Trial WA

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Larry Cummins was 20 when a Goulburn jury convicted him of armed robbery and he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour, the first in irons. His accomplice in the hold-up, both men with blackened faces, had been his 18-year-old brother. And the charge everyone was talking about had already been dropped: the murder of that same brother.

Weeks earlier, police had found the younger Cummins hiding in the loft of his mother’s hut. He fired twice at the constables before surrendering, and they saddled one of the family’s own horses to take him to the lockup. Eight miles along the track a single shot rang out from the bush. It struck the prisoner behind the ear; he “gave one groan” and died. The constables never saw the gunman, only heard a horse galloping away. The shot was assumed to have been meant for the constable, and the man behind it to be Larry, trying to set his brother free. There was not enough evidence to try him for it.

Three years later Cummins escaped from Berrima Gaol by crawling through 120 yards of sewer, only to be recaptured within months. Released in 1876, he lived out his days in Victoria under another name, as a drover and whipmaker, and died in 1909.

Sepia portrait of bushranger Larry Cummins 1843 to 1909

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