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

1926: Royston Rennie Hanged at Perth for a Train Robbery Murder

On 3 June 1926, Royston Rennie boarded a train between East Perth and Perth stations and attacked two employees of the National Bank of Australasia who were transferring a large sum of banknotes from the Maylands branch to head office. He bludgeoned 15-year-old junior clerk Douglas Favas into unconsciousness and fatally shot senior clerk John Roger Greville, seizing the cash before fleeing. Rennie had spent weeks ingratiating himself with locals, posing as an aviator seeking work with W.A. Airways, and had borrowed a pistol from a Bassendean acquaintance under false pretences.

Tried before Justice Northmore, Rennie pleaded not guilty in a low but firm voice. The testimony of young Favas, himself a victim of the attack, proved decisive. The jury convicted, and Rennie was sentenced to death. He was executed at Perth on 2 August 1926.

Royston Rennie the gentleman killer from Perth executed in Fremantle

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Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Robbery Trial WA

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1876: Wild Bill Hickok Shot Dead at the Poker Table in Deadwood

James Butler Hickok, known as Wild Bill Hickok, was shot and killed on August 2, 1876, while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. The killer was Jack McCall, an unsuccessful gambler who approached from behind and fired a single shot. Hickok, 39, had built a formidable reputation as a frontier lawman, Union army scout, marksman, and showman, though much of his legend rested on exaggeration, including his own.

The cards Hickok held at the moment of his death, two pairs of black aces and eights, passed into folklore as the dead man’s hand. McCall was initially acquitted but later retried, convicted, and hanged. Hickok remains one of the most mythologised figures of the American Old West.

Portrait photograph of James Hickok

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Assassination Gambling Murder Organised Crime USA

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1589: Monk Jacques Clement Stabs King Henry III to Death in Saint-Cloud

On 1 August 1589, Jacques Clement, a Dominican lay brother and zealous supporter of the Catholic League, gained an audience with King Henry III at Saint-Cloud, where the king was besieging Paris during the French Wars of Religion. Concealing a dagger beneath his cloak, Clement stabbed the king under the pretence of delivering a confidential message. The royal attendants cut Clement down immediately, but Henry III lingered until the following morning, dying after urging Henri of Navarre that conversion to Catholicism was the only path to lasting peace.

Clement, born in 1567 at Serbonnes in Burgundy, had been radicalised by League ideology and the targeted killings of its leaders, the Duke and Cardinal de Guise. His plot had the quiet blessing of Catherine de Guise, Duchess Montpensier, who saw it as righteous vengeance. The League faithful hailed him as a martyr; Royalists and Protestants condemned him as a fanatic. His corpse was posthumously quartered and burned.

Portrait of Jacques Clement assassin of King Henry III

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Assassination Europe France Political Crime Religious Conflict

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1966: Charles Whitman Opens Fire from the Texas Tower, Killing 17 in Austin

On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman, a former Marine and engineering student at the University of Texas at Austin, killed his mother and wife the night before, then armed himself with rifles and climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of the campus clock tower. For 96 minutes he fired at random pedestrians below, killing eleven and wounding 31, before Austin police shot him dead. Three more had been killed inside the building on his way up.

Whitman had sought psychiatric help in the months before the attack, reporting violent ideations, severe headaches, and episodes of uncontrollable rage. A posthumous autopsy found a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor pressing on his amygdala, sparking lasting debate about neurological contributions to his behaviour. The attack, one of the first mass shootings to receive widespread national media coverage, is widely credited with driving the creation of SWAT teams across the United States.

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Mass Shooting Murder Serial Killer USA

1926: Royston Rennie Hanged at Perth for a Train Robbery Murder

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1876: Wild Bill Hickok Shot Dead at the Poker Table in Deadwood

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1589: Monk Jacques Clement Stabs King Henry III to Death in Saint-Cloud

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1966: Charles Whitman Opens Fire from the Texas Tower, Killing 17 in Austin

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