One October night in 1965, Ian Brady and his lover Myra Hindley brought a seventeen-year-old back to their home near Manchester, where Brady killed him with an axe in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, whom they had wrongly taken for a kindIan Brady and Myra Hindley brought 17-year-old Edward Evans back to their home near Manchester after Brady had approached him at Manchester Central station. Brady attacked Evans with a hatchet in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, whom Brady apparently believed could be drawn into his criminal world, before strangling Evans with electrical flex.

Smith was horrified and notified police the next morning. Police Superintendent Bob Talbot arrived at the house wearing a bread deliveryman’s overall over his uniform. Inside, Brady was lying on a divan writing to his employer about his injured ankle. Talbot said he was investigating “an act of violence involving guns”, and Hindley denied that any violence had occurred.

When officers asked for the key to a locked spare bedroom, Hindley claimed it was at work. Police offered to take her there to retrieve it, at which point Brady told her to hand it over. Inside the room, they found Evans’s body, and Brady was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Classic Vehicle. Vintage Citroen Bread delivery van | ID 57067159 © Johnbaguley100 | Dreamstime.com
ID 57067159 © Johnbaguley100 | Dreamstime.com

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Edgar Allan Poe was discovered slumped outside a Baltimore tavern being used as a polling place, barely conscious and dressed in clothes that were not his own. He could not explain where he had been for the five days since he was last seen, and he never recovered enough to try; he died four days later at a city hospital, aged 40.

On this date, his doctor recorded his last words as “Lord help my poor soul”, after a night of Poe repeatedly calling out a name, Reynolds, that no one has ever identified. Newspapers blamed drink, but Poe’s death certificate and medical records have since vanished, and the true cause was never established.

One theory, raised decades later, points to cooping: a 19th century election scam in which gangs plied captives with liquor and forced them to vote repeatedly in disguise, which would explain both his stupor and his stolen clothes. No version of events has ever been confirmed.

Photograph of Edgar Allan Poe - 1848
Photograph of Edgar Allan Poe – 1848

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David Birnie and his partner Catherine abducted and murdered four women around Perth in 1986, in what became known as the Moorhouse murders. Their victims included 22-year-old Mary Neilson. Both pleaded guilty and received life sentences, with the trial judge declaring that Birnie should never be released.    On 7 October 2005, nineteen years and one day after their first murder, Birnie was found dead in his cell at Casuarina Prison, hours before he was due in court over an alleged assault on another inmate. An inquest later heard that his antidepressant medication had been withdrawn and his computer confiscated in the weeks before his death.

Empty prison cell corridor with a row of rooms
Empty prison cell corridor with a row of rooms

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James Scobie, a Scottish gold miner, was killed outside Bentley’s Hotel at Ballarat on this date after he and a companion found the pub shut and tried to get in. A hand smashed through a window to strike him, the publican’s wife accused him of breaking it, and as he fled a group of men caught up with him; one blow, delivered with something Peter Martin, the only witness, described as resembling a battle-axe, killed him on the spot.

At the inquest that same afternoon, hotelkeeper James Bentley and his staff denied any involvement, and despite a strong case against them the magistrate let the matter drop. Miners furious at the whitewash burned Bentley’s Hotel to the ground, and only after public outcry was a fresh trial held at Melbourne‘s Supreme Court, where Bentley and two others were convicted of manslaughter. The anger over Scobie’s death and its botched cover-up became one of the sparks that lit the Eureka Rebellion weeks later.

Swearing allegiance to the Southern Cross flag.
Swearing allegiance to the Southern Cross flag.

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On This Day in True Crime History
1891·The Mace, the Madam, and a Melbourne Scandal That Never Died
1959·Through a Chapel Ventilator: the Sydney Jailbreak That Triggered Australia's Biggest Manhunt
More Crime On This Day →

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