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1864: Alexander Ritchie Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Murder of Mr Owen at Yandilla

On the evening of 29 April 1864, Mr Owen was shot and killed while travelling by buggy between Leyburn and Yandilla in Queensland, accompanied by the Reverend Mr Thackery. Alexander Ritchie, a convict, was tried, convicted by jury, and sentenced to death. The execution, the first to take place at Toowoomba Gaol, was carried out on 1 August 1864. A scaffold enclosed with glazed calico had been erected in the western yard of the new gaol, with the High Sheriff, E. H. Halloran, overseeing preparations.

Ritchie maintained his innocence to the end, supported in his final days by the Reverend Mr Hart and Dr Nelson. He ascended the scaffold with calm and resolve, addressing the assembled witnesses with striking words: “Gentlemen, I am innocent of this charge in the sight of God, but not of men. God has put this punishment upon me for other sins of which I have been guilty, but of this I am innocent.”

Alexander Ritchie Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Murder of Mr Owen at Yandilla

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Australia Execution Leyburn Murder QLD Toowoomba Trial Yandilla

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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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1843: Hanged Outside Adelaide Gaol for the Port Lincoln Station Murders of 1842

In March 1842, Elizabeth Stubbs and a man named Biddle were killed at a remote pastoral station near Port Lincoln, South Australia. The killings came amid a period of violent conflict between colonists and local people in the region. The man later convicted of the murder of Stubbs had also been involved in an armed raid on a neighbouring station, where a group drove off the owner under threat of spears and clubs before taking goods and dispersing into the scrub.

Convicted at the Criminal Sessions, he was hanged on a drop erected at the entrance to Adelaide Gaol on 1 August 1843, at the age of around 25. Mounted police under Captain Tolmer kept the ground. In the days before his death he received the attention of German missionaries, one of whom remained with him until the final preparations. A colonial account noted he showed no outward fear, with observers recording a belief that death by hanging would bring him reborn into a new life.

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Adelaide Australia Colonial Crime Execution Murder Port Lincoln SA

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1977: Son of Sam Shoots Final Victims in a Parked Car in Brooklyn

On the night of July 31, 1977, Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante, both 20, were shot while sitting in a parked car in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, on their first date. David Berkowitz, the serial killer known as the Son of Sam, fired four rounds, striking both in the head. Moskowitz died from her injuries; Violante lost his left eye. It was the final shooting in a terror campaign that had gripped New York City since 1975, leaving six dead and eleven wounded. Armed with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, Berkowitz had taunted police with letters promising further crimes, triggering one of the largest manhunts in the city’s history. A parking ticket proved the vital clue to his arrest on August 10, 1977. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six concurrent life sentences.

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1864: Alexander Ritchie Hanged at Toowoomba Gaol for the Murder of Mr Owen at Yandilla

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

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1843: Hanged Outside Adelaide Gaol for the Port Lincoln Station Murders of 1842

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1977: Son of Sam Shoots Final Victims in a Parked Car in Brooklyn

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