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

Lesley Ann Downey had been missing since Boxing Day 1964, taken from a Manchester fairground and killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who recorded her final minutes on tape. In October 1965 police digging on Saddleworth Moor spotted a bone protruding from the peat.

The body recovered was still visually identifiable. It was formally confirmed the next day as Lesley Ann, and her mother identified her by the clothing recovered with her, bringing a grim end to months of searching in one of Britain’s most notorious crime cases.

Grim Murder Discoveries on Saddleworth Moors

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Cold Case England Manchester Murder Serial Killer UK

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Nine months after her husband Louis XVI went to the guillotine, Marie Antoinette followed him, tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal for treason against the new French Republic. Her hair had been cropped and her wrists bound behind her back; she rode to the Place de la Revolution in an open cart, not the closed carriage that had carried the king. Witnesses recorded that climbing the scaffold she stepped on her executioner’s foot and murmured an apology, a small, almost absurd courtesy moments before the blade fell on 16 October 1793. The crowd that had once cheered a queen watched in silence.

Marie Antoinette's execution in 1793 — Marie Antoinette’s execution in 1793

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Europe Execution France Political Crime Trial

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Seven year old Olive Morris died on this day in East Perth, her throat swabbed raw, just as her older sister Annie had died months before. Both times the family doctor, Cuthbert, signed the same death certificate: diphtheria. Both times he was wrong.

What the certificate did not record was hydrochloric acid, swabbed onto the children’s throats by their father’s partner, Martha Rendell, under the guise of treating illness. The pattern would not be noticed for two more years, until a third child in the household died the same way and police finally ordered the earlier graves reopened.

The exhumations in 1909 revealed what two death certificates had missed, and set in motion the case that would end with Rendell on the gallows.

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Australia Child Abuse Cold Case East Perth Execution Exoneration Murder Perth Poisoning WA

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Matthew Craven and Thomas Cavanagh rode with a bushranging gang led by Patrick Sullivan that terrorised stations around Bathurst for half a year, robbing homesteads, stealing horses and holding settlers at gunpoint. Captured after a shootout at a bark hut, the pair pleaded guilty at trial to burglary and theft and were sentenced to hang.

On 16 October 1826 they left Sydney Gaol with three other condemned men bound for Burwood, where they were hanged before a large crowd that morning. Straight afterwards, the two men, Craven and Cavanagh travelled further on on to the Western Road near Parramatta, arriving about noon to face their own gallows.

Witnesses said their contrition was conspicuous; Craven, described as barely twenty, reportedly hung his head and sobbed bitterly as the ropes were fitted.

Bushrangers in action: Water colour drawing created by George Lacy 1867

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Australia Bathurst Burwood Bushranging Execution Gang NSW Parramatta Robbery Sydney Trial

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