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

1944: The Acid Bath Murderer: John Haigh Dissolves His Former Boss in a Barrel of Sulphuric Acid

John Haigh, a convicted fraudster, murdered his former employer William ‘Mac’ McSwan and dissolved his body in a barrel of sulphuric acid. Haigh later claimed the killing was driven by a compulsion he called blood lust, but McSwan had money and property, and the murder looks less like madness than a calculated escalation of Haigh’s earlier fraud schemes.

Tellingly, whatever ‘compulsion’ Haigh described did not resurface until the cash from the McSwan killing had run out, suggesting the acid barrel was less about bloodlust and more about a ruthless, practical solution to funding his lifestyle.

Portrait of john george haigh - acid bath murderer. Public Domain. — Portrait of john george haigh – acid bath murderer. Public Domain.

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England Fraud London Murder Serial Killer UK

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1902: “Me Done It, and I Am Satisfied”: The Chilling Calm of a Perth Murder

Samuel Peters killed his wife Trevenna in their home at Leederville, a suburb of Perth, on the night of 3 July 1902. A neighbour heard a scream and Peters’s voice between 2 and 3am, but it was not until half past nine the next morning that the couple’s children raised the alarm. Mrs Peters was found lying in a pool of blood in her bedroom, badly injured, with no weapon in sight; Peters himself was discovered fully dressed and asleep in an adjoining room.

When the arresting constable woke him and told him his wife had been murdered, Peters answered flatly, “Me done it, and I am satisfied.”

At his trial, witnesses described a marriage marked by constant quarrelling. Peters had accused his wife of carrying on affairs with two men, Adams and Nicholas, and was said to have taken to calling her Mrs Adams in front of neighbours. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to death, later hanged at Fremantle Prison.

Old rustic bedroom with a metal-framed bed and rumpled blankets, sunlight streaming through an open door and a window in a stone-walled room.

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Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Trial WA

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1754: Born to Mutiny Twice: Captain William Bligh, Survivor of the Bounty and the Rum Rebellion in Sydney

Born on 9 September 1754, William Bligh rose to Vice-Admiral of the Blue and served as Governor of New South Wales from 1806 to 1808, but he is remembered above all for surviving not one but two uprisings against his command.

The first came on 28 April 1789 aboard HMAV Bounty, when Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny in the South Pacific. Bligh and 18 loyal crew were cast adrift in a 23-foot open launch so overloaded its gunwales sat only inches above the water, given four cutlasses and barely a week’s food, with a compass and quadrant but no charts. The ship’s clerk, Samuel, defied threats from the mutineers to smuggle aboard vital navigation instruments, while the gunner’s own pocket watch became the only means of keeping time. Fleeing hostile islanders at Tofua, the party lost quartermaster John Norton, killed on the beach, before Bligh navigated the tiny boat some 3,618 nautical miles to safety at Timor.

Nearly two decades later, as governor of Sydney, Bligh faced a second rebellion when officers of the NSW Corps deposed him in the colony’s Rum Rebellion, a rare case of a British officer surviving both a shipboard mutiny and a colonial military coup.

Sydney Rum Rebellion Arrest of Governor Bligh historical illustration

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Australia Historical Event Mutiny Naval History NSW Pacific Political Crime Rebellion Sydney UK

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1888: Jack the Ripper Claims His Second Victim: the Mutilation of Annie Chapman

Annie Chapman was a heavy drinker who had turned to prostitution in London’s Whitechapel after her marriage collapsed and her daughter died, using the earnings to pay for drink and a bed for the night. On the night of her death she had no money for lodgings and went out to earn her rent; her body was found in the early hours in a backyard, her throat cut and her abdomen slashed open.

The killer had arranged her intestines over her shoulder and removed her uterus, taking it with him. An autopsy determined she had been sober at the time of her death, ruling out the drunkenness that had shaped so much of her life.

Her murder, following that of Mary Ann Nichols just over a week earlier, confirmed for police that a single killer, soon dubbed Jack the Ripper, was stalking the women of Whitechapel.

Portrait of Annie Chapman with her husband in 1869

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Cold Case London Murder Serial Killer UK Unsolved

1944: The Acid Bath Murderer: John Haigh Dissolves His Former Boss in a Barrel of Sulphuric Acid

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1902: “Me Done It, and I Am Satisfied”: The Chilling Calm of a Perth Murder

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1754: Born to Mutiny Twice: Captain William Bligh, Survivor of the Bounty and the Rum Rebellion in Sydney

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1888: Jack the Ripper Claims His Second Victim: the Mutilation of Annie Chapman

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