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

Winnie Ruth Judd earned the tabloid name the Trunk Murderess after she shot two friends in Phoenix, Arizona, then packed their bodies into steamer trunks and shipped them by rail to Los Angeles in 1931. When the trunks began to leak, she walked into a Los Angeles police station and gave herself up.

Convicted of murder in 1932, she was declared insane and spent much of the next four decades confined to an Arizona mental institution, escaping it several times before finally being paroled in 1971. She died in Phoenix on this day in 1998, aged 93, exactly 67 years to the day after she had first surrendered to police.

Portrait of Winnie Ruth Judd convicted of murdering two nurses 1932

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Arizona California Los Angeles Mental Illness Murder Phoenix Prison Trial USA

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Augustin De Kitchilan, a young drifter from Ceylon, had been living and working at Leah Fouracre’s isolated farm near Waroona, Western Australia, breaking in her horses in exchange for board. When Fouracre disappeared in mid August 1907, her farmhouse was found burnt to the ground with her charred remains inside, while De Kitchilan was soon found riding her horse and pawning her jewellery across the district. Convicted of her murder after a trial in Perth, he was hanged at Fremantle Prison on 23 October 1907. In his final days he wrote what he titled ‘my last confession’, a rambling letter to the public that never actually admitted guilt, instead taunting readers in verse to guess who had pulled the trigger if not him. De Kitchilan denied the murder to the end, declaring at his sentencing, ‘I absolutely deny the committal of the dirty crime with which I am charged.’

Kitchilan's Execution for the Peppermint Farm Murder : Illustration 1907 — Kitchilan’s Execution for the Peppermint Farm Murder : Illustration 1907

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Arson Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Trial WA Waroona

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John Dykes gambled away everything he had, then slid from pickpocketing into armed robbery on the road between Mile End and Bow. When he held up Charles Wright at gunpoint, his haul amounted to a penknife, a seal, and five shillings and eightpence, hardly a fortune worth a man’s neck.

He was convicted at Newgate and hanged on this day in 1721, just 23 years old, the end of a fall from gambling debts to the gallows that had taken only a few short years.

John Dykes: The Gambler Turned Highwayman

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Execution Gambling Highwayman London Robbery UK

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A brutal ambush in the shadow of the gaol wall left young William Hickey beaten unconscious, his skull cut open and his jaw broken, in a robbery that netted his attackers little more than a hat, a pair of shoes and twenty shillings. The alarm was raised by a publican’s son who watched the assault from his doorway, and constables chased two fleeing men through the streets of Sydney, catching George Williams yards away still clutching a stone to hurl at his pursuer.

At trial Williams protested his innocence in a written defence, pointing out that Hickey could never identify his attacker’s face, only the stolen hat and shoes dropped mid flight. The jury convicted him regardless, and he was publicly hanged in Sydney on 22 October 1829, meeting his end, witnesses said, with calm and reverent composure.

Lower George Street Sydney street scene 1828

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Australia Execution NSW Robbery Sydney Trial

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