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

Aileen Wuornos killed seven men in Florida, and later claimed the first death was self defence against a convicted rapist. By the time her case reached its final stage, she had turned against the very lawyers trying to save her.

When her appeal team moved for a retrial, Wuornos went to court and had them fired, insisting she was sane and wanted no further appeals. Many who studied her, including documentary maker Nick Broomfield, came to believe otherwise, pointing to erratic, unsettling behaviour in her final interviews as a sign of serious mental illness. The courts accepted her wishes regardless, and she was executed by lethal injection in 2002, declining a final meal.

Wuornos went to her death on this date maintaining a defiant, confused mix of guilt and conspiracy claims rather than a clear confession or denial.

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Execution Florida Murder Serial Killer Trial USA

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Kevin Simmonds and fellow inmate Leslie Newcombe escaped Sydney‘s Long Bay jail on 9 October 1959 by squeezing through a ventilator in an old chapel while prisoners watched a film. The next day they killed prison guard Cecil Mills at Emu Plains Prison Farm and fled with his gun, triggering what became the biggest manhunt in Australian history.

Newcombe was caught within a fortnight, but Simmonds evaded hundreds of armed police, tracker dogs and a helicopter for more than five weeks, tying up two rangers and stealing their truck along the way. Detective Sergeant Ray Kelly, nicknamed ‘Gunner’ for his record of shooting suspects, finally ran him down near Mulbring on 15 November, by which point crowds were cheering him at police stations as a folk hero.

A jury convicted both men of manslaughter rather than murder, and Simmonds was sent to the ‘intractables’ wing of Grafton gaol. Six years of brutal treatment there left him a vacant, self-harming shell of the man who had outrun the state; he was found hanged in his cell in 1966.

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Australia Escape Grafton Hunter Valley Manhunt Murder NSW Prison Suicide Sydney Trial

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Che Guevara had already helped topple one government, fighting alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba, when he slipped into Bolivia in 1966 to light the same fuse there. He spent nearly a year leading a ragged guerrilla band through the jungle, hunted by the Bolivian army with American backing, before troops cornered and captured him on 8 October 1967 in a remote ravine.

He was held overnight in a schoolhouse in a small village, then shot dead the following day on orders from the Bolivian government, which wanted him silenced rather than put on public trial. His death turned him instantly into a global revolutionary icon, his face reproduced on posters and T-shirts for decades after the jungle where he fell was forgotten.

Bust of Che Guevara in La Higuera. LA HIGUERA, BOLIVIA - AUGUST 6: Monument to Che Guevara in La Higuera, Bolivia seen on August 6, 2014. Guevara was executed in La Higuera in 1967 | ID 54527187 © Jesse Kraft | Dreamstime.com — ID 54527187 © Jesse Kraft | Dreamstime.com

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Bolivia Execution Guerrilla Warfare Latin America Political Crime Revolution South America

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Thomas Berriman, manager of the Hawthorn branch of the Commercial Bank, was shot outside Glenferrie Station in Melbourne on this date while carrying £1,851 in bank funds to the head office. He died from the wound two weeks later.

Angus Murray was hanged for the killing, convicted as a principal even though it was his companion who actually pulled the trigger. Underworld figure Squizzy Taylor, swept up as the robbery’s alleged organiser, escaped a murder charge, convicted only of occupying a house frequented by thieves and serving six months.

The actual gunman, Richard Buckley, vanished for almost seven years before detectives traced him, bearded and living quietly, to a house in Moonee Ponds. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and in 1946, dying and in his eighties, he was released to spend his final days at home.

Commercial Bank branch where manager T R V Berriman was shot: 1923

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Australia Execution Gang Melbourne Murder Organised Crime Robbery Trial VIC

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