In October 1965, Ian Brady picked up seventeen-year-old Edward Evans at a Manchester railway station, telling him he had been invited home for a drink. At the house on Wardle Brook Avenue, Brady had Myra Hindley fetch her brother-in-law David Smith under the pretext of sharing miniature wine bottles. Smith arrived in time to witness Brady strike Evans with a hatchet and strangle him with electrical cord, screams tearing through the house as Hindley called out for help.

Smith helped move the body to a spare room before fleeing home, where he was sick and told his wife everything. He contacted police the next morning armed with a screwdriver and bread knife in case Brady came after him. Officers found Evans’ body behind a locked door, and as he dressed for arrest, Brady offered a chillingly understated explanation: he and Evans “had a row and the situation got out of hand.” The killing exposed what became known as the Moors Murders.

Shocked male witness after fatal late night accident
Shocked male witness after fatal late night accident

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

For about two decades, Eugenia Falleni lived as a man named Harry Crawford, working ordinary jobs and marrying a woman named Annie Birkett in 1913 without her ever suspecting the truth. The marriage held until Eight-Hour Day in 1917, when Birkett disappeared; her charred remains were later found in bushland near Lane Cove.

It took police years to connect Crawford to the body and to discover the deeper deception underneath. Tried at the Central Criminal Court in Sydney, Falleni was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment.

Eugenia Falleni 1920
Eugenia Falleni 1920

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

At a one-teacher school in rural Victoria, two unemployed plasterers, Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland, burst in with a sawn-off shotgun and forced 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs and her six young pupils into a van, demanding a million dollar ransom. Victoria’s premier agreed to pay, and the education minister himself waited at the handover point with police hidden nearby, but the kidnappers never returned to collect it.

Left alone with the children overnight, Gibbs kicked out a door panel with her heavy platform boots and led the girls through the dark bush to safety. Eastwood and Boland were run down in a manhunt; Eastwood pleaded guilty and was jailed, while Boland was convicted after three trials.

It was not the end of the story. Eastwood escaped prison years later and staged a second mass kidnapping of a teacher and nine pupils, and while back behind bars he killed a fellow inmate in what was ruled self-defence.

White camper van parked on dirt pull-off overlooking rural hills
White camper van parked on dirt pull-off overlooking rural hills

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Five months after his brother Jesse James was gunned down in 1882, Frank James boarded a train to the Missouri state capital and laid his revolver in the hands of Governor Crittenden. “I have been hunted for twenty-one years,” he said, “have literally lived in the saddle… It was one long, anxious, inexorable, eternal vigil.” He added that he had never let another man touch his gun since 1861.

Tried for only two of the gang’s robberies and killings, in Missouri and Alabama, James was acquitted both times, helped by testimony from a former Confederate general. He was never extradited over the infamous Northfield raid and never spent a day in prison. He spent his remaining three decades as a shoe salesman, a racetrack official and a tour guide on the old family farm, where he died in 1915 at the age of 72.

Frank James outlaw and criminal figure
Frank James outlaw and criminal figure

⬅ See all events from 5 October

Spread the word on your favourite platform!
On This Day in True Crime History
1853·"I Would Finish You Now": Hanged in Melbourne for the Murder of His Mistress
1853·The Young Witness Testifies: Alexander Ram Hanged in Melbourne for Murdering Kitty Hennessy
1883·Hanged in Perth, Each Still Blaming the Other to the End
1885·Hanged in Brisbane After a Feverish Stockman Shot the Manager Who Denied Him Hospital
1888·Mutiny on the Brisbane River: the Captain Who Threatened to Turn His Guns on Parliament
1926·The Gold He Took to His Grave: Two Men Hanged in Fremantle for Killing Two Police Officers
More Crime On This Day →

Subscribe to Dark Stories

True crime stories, dark history and tour news, straight to your inbox.