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

William Miller, a labourer at Hawkesbury near Sydney, attacked Bridget Horan (also recorded as Kean) with a hoe on the afternoon of 18 September 1805. Minutes later he ran to a neighbour and blurted out the truth: “Yes: I have killed Biddy, and am going to deliver myself up.” He then led the chief constable straight to her body himself, the hoe still lying beside it.

At his trial before the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction in Sydney, Miller pleaded not guilty to acting with malice, insisting the killing had come from unbridled momentary rage rather than intent. The court was unconvinced. He was convicted and hanged on 30 September 1805, his body afterwards handed over for dissection.

Witnesses said Miller never wavered from his confession, going to the gallows with what observers called sincere repentance, seemingly resigned that only his own death could answer for hers.

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Australia Confession Execution Hawkesbury Murder NSW Sydney Trial

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Timothy Sullivan lived with an elderly shepherd named Daniel Harrington at King’s Plains, near Carcoar in the Bathurst district. On the night of 4 June 1852, neighbours were woken by Sullivan himself shouting “robbers, robbers” from his hut. When a neighbour, Daniel Healy, ran to help, he found no robber, only Sullivan raining blows on the old man with a heavy weapon he then hurled onto the roof. Harrington, barely alive, managed to whisper his own name before he died.

At the Bathurst Assizes the judge dismissed the robbery story as invention, noting that nothing had actually been stolen and that the wounds showed deliberate, prolonged violence. Convicted of wilful murder, Sullivan was hanged on 30 September 1852; the drop was so severe it very nearly tore his head from his body.

On the scaffold a priest read a statement on Sullivan’s behalf: he claimed he had rushed out in the dark with a flesh fork believing a robber was near, striking blindly, and insisted “he did not know it was Harrington he was wounding.”

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Australia Bathurst Carcoar Execution Murder NSW Trial

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John Rheuben had lived with Fanny Hardwick for two years, supporting her mother and child, until he turned her out and she took up with another man. Furious at her refusal to return, he beat his rival twice, threatened to “do for him”, and quietly sharpened a sheath knife at the local gasworks. On a Sunday evening in Rockhampton he forced his way into the house where she was staying, dragged her into a back bedroom, and stabbed her five or six times, one wound reaching her heart.

Tried before Mr Justice Power, Rheuben was convicted despite a defence of temporary insanity, and a petition for mercy signed across Rockhampton failed to move the Executive. He was hanged in Brisbane on 30 September 1901, praying loudly on the drop and thanking the warders for their kindness before the trap fell.

He never admitted the killing outright. To his priest he said only that he had been “mad drunk” and remembered striking at someone, but nothing more.

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Australia Brisbane Execution Jealousy Murder QLD Rockhampton Trial

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In the early hours, the killer known as Jack the Ripper struck twice within the same hour. His third victim, Elizabeth Stride, was found with her throat cut and still bleeding, her killer likely interrupted before he could mutilate her further. Denied his ritual, he found a fourth victim within the hour: Catherine Eddowes, whose body was left with her intestines arranged over her shoulder and part of her womb removed.

Weeks later, a Londoner opened a parcel addressed simply “From Hell” to find half a preserved kidney inside, accompanied by a taunting letter. Tests suggested it may have belonged to Eddowes herself, though the claim was never proven and the killer was never caught.

Murders of Liz Stride and Catherine Eddowes

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Europe London Murder Mutilation Serial Killer UK Unsolved

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