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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William Dodd, a ticket-of-leave man, struck the bargain that would hang him: ten pounds and a horse named Turk, promised by the wealthy settler’s own wife in exchange for her husband’s death. At the Vasse, Dodd lost his nerve at the bedroom door and had to be plied with more drink before he went back in, seized John Hurford by the throat, and strangled him as the old man cried out.

Convicted at Perth on circumstantial evidence and a damning account from a fellow ticket-of-leave man he had bragged to, Dodd was hanged within the walls of the new gaol on 15 October 1855, alongside the wife who had hired him.

On the scaffold, Dodd tried to shift the blame, insisting that another man had actually struck the fatal blow while he merely stood by, a story that flatly contradicted the confession he himself had made days after the murder.

Angry muscular man pointing at camera in confrontation

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Australia Conspiracy Execution Murder Perth Trial Vasse WA

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Bridget Hurford had grown to despise her older, wealthy husband John Hurford long before she decided to have him killed. She paid a ticket-of-leave man named Dodd with cash and the promise of her husband’s own horse to strangle him in his bed at Vasse, first arranging for the man who usually guarded him at night to be sent away, and had another convict quietly forge a will in her favour beforehand.

Tried and convicted alongside Dodd, Hurford was hanged first at the new Perth Gaol on 15 October 1855, attended to the last by her confessors. Witnesses who expected a dramatic collapse instead described her as quiet and subdued as she went to the gallows, even as crowds, among them women carrying infants, gathered to watch.

She fully confessed her guilt before her death, corroborating the evidence given against her at trial.

Bloody zombie woman screaming at camera on black background

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Australia Conspiracy Execution Forgery Murder Perth Trial Vasse WA

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On 15 October 1769, during his first voyage along the coast of New Zealand, Lieutenant James Cook watched a group of Maori men attempt to seize a servant from his landing party and haul him away in a canoe. The attempt failed and the servant was recovered, but Cook marked the spot on his chart with a name that stuck: Kidnappers Bay.

According to the Maori version of events recorded at the time, the men believed they were not abducting a stranger at all, but rescuing a Maori boy they thought was being held captive aboard the English ship. The misunderstanding, born of two cultures reading the same scene in entirely different ways, turned a rescue attempt into what the English recorded as a kidnapping.

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Colonial History Exploration Kidnapping New Zealand

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