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

Martha Needle had already buried her husband and both young daughters, each death blamed on a mysterious wasting illness, when she turned her attention to the family of her fiance, Otto Juncken. Months before her arrest she fed his brother Louis arsenic, and when his only surviving brother also sickened, doctors found arsenic disguised as rat poison in his vomit. Police lay in wait and caught Needle in the act, offering him a cup of tea laced with ten grains of poison.

Tried for Louis’s murder, her lawyer argued that she suffered fits of unconsciousness and should not be held responsible, but an insanity plea was dismissed. Convicted with no recommendation for mercy, Needle was hanged in Melbourne on 22 October 1894. Exhumations later found arsenic in the bodies of her husband and both daughters as well, confirming a killing spree that had gone undetected for years. She left everything she owned to Otto, the man who had stood by her to the end.

Martha Needle: Public Record Office Victoria, VPRS 516/P0000, Central Register of Female Prisoners, register nos. 5926–6415 (1891–1896).

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Australia Execution Melbourne Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial VIC

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Kenneth Bianchi confessed to being the Hillside Strangler, but he did not go down alone. To save himself, he named his older cousin, Angelo Buono, as his accomplice, and on this day in 1979 Buono was arrested in Los Angeles.

The betrayal inverted everything investigators assumed about the case. It was Buono, not Bianchi, who turned out to be the predatory sexual sadist and driving force behind their partnership, having first drawn his younger cousin into crime years earlier by suggesting they go into business together as pimps. That shared criminal history curdled into a killing spree, and when the pressure of capture came, it was Bianchi who broke family loyalty to shift the blame onto the man who had led him there.

Hillside Strangler: Aerial view of rush hour traffic on the 101 Ventura Freeway

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Arrest Los Angeles Murder Serial Killer Trial USA

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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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Oscar Pistorius, the South African Paralympic sprinter known as the Blade Runner, shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp four times through a locked bathroom door at his Pretoria home, insisting he believed an intruder was inside. A court accepted the defence and convicted him only of culpable homicide, the South African equivalent of manslaughter.

On 21 October 2014 he was sentenced to a maximum of five years imprisonment, and was released on parole for good behaviour within a year. In December 2015 an appeals court overturned the lesser verdict entirely, finding that Pistorius had in fact committed murder, and sent the case back for a harsher sentence.

Oscar Pistorius. Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius (born 22 November 1986) is a South African sprint runner. Known as the Blade Runner and the fastest man on no legs, Pistorius, who has a double amputation, is the world record holder in the 100, 200 and 400 metres (sport class T44) events and runs with the aid of Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs by Ossur. | ID 21041028 © Valentin M Armianu | Dreamstime.com — ID 21041028 © Valentin M Armianu | Dreamstime.com

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Africa Appeal Celebrity Crime Manslaughter Murder South Africa Trial

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