Nineteen-year-old Yolanda Washington was last seen getting into a car near a Los Angeles intersection one October evening in 1977. The next morning her body was found on a hillside near the Ventura Freeway, the first known victim of the killers soon dubbed the Hillside Stranglers.

Her killers were cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who had lured her with the promise of a ride before attacking and strangling her. Washington, who worked as a waitress and sometimes turned to sex work, was the opening victim in a killing spree that would terrorise the city for months before the cousins were finally caught.

Aerial view of rush hour traffic on the 101 Ventura Freeway
Hillside Strangler: Aerial view of rush hour traffic on the 101 Ventura Freeway

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In October 1861 the politician Horatio Wills led an enormous settler train, more than 10,000 sheep and a line of bullock wagons, onto Gayiri land in Central Queensland to establish a cattle station at Cullin-la-ringo, without seeking permission from the people whose country it was. Tensions were already high: a neighbouring squatter had wrongly accused Gayiri men of stealing cattle and had several killed over it.

On 17 October, Aboriginal people who had been passing through the camp all day attacked, killing nineteen of the twenty-five settlers present, including Wills himself. Only a handful escaped, among them his teenage son Tom Wills, later a celebrated cricketer and co-founder of Australian rules football.

The arrival of the neighbouring squatters and Mon collecting and burying the dead. By T.G.Moyle: 1861
The arrival of the neighbouring squatters and Mon collecting and burying the dead. By T.G.Moyle: 1861

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When the men accused of killing miner James Scobie walked free, the goldfields of Ballarat erupted. Roughly ten thousand miners massed near the Eureka Hotel, the pub where Scobie had been beaten to death, convinced the verdict was a stitch-up between the publican and the authorities.

The crowd set the hotel ablaze and turned on the officials sent to calm them: Gold Commissioner Rede was pelted with eggs as police and soldiers failed to restore order. The riot was a direct spark for the unrest that would culminate weeks later in the Eureka Stockade, one of the defining clashes of Australian colonial history.

Burning of Bentleys Hotel during the Eureka Riot 1854
Burning of Bentleys Hotel during the Eureka Riot 1854

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In 1979, Philadelphia police searching Ira Einhorn’s apartment found a locked steamer trunk shoved into a closet; inside were the mummified remains of his former girlfriend, Holly Maddux, missing for more than a year. Einhorn, a charismatic countercultural figure known as the Unicorn Killer, fled the country before trial and spent nearly two decades hiding in Europe before he was finally captured in France.

Extradited to the United States, Einhorn stood trial in 2002 and took the stand in his own defense, insisting CIA agents had killed Maddux and framed him. The jury took just two hours to convict him of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced the following day to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Vintage steamer trunk with secrets locked up tight.
Vintage steamer trunk with secrets locked up tight.

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On This Day in True Crime History
1816·He Blamed His Mate for the Shot, But It Was His Own Gun That Fired: Triple Hanging in Sydney
1895·"Look, Jimmy": The Chilling Instant Before a Fatal Tomahawk Attack Near Mount Morgan, Hanged in Brisbane.
1895·"A Feeling of Relief": Hanged in Melbourne for Drowning a Family Member
1993·11-04 | 1993 Two More Victims Discovered: The Backpacker Murders in the Forest South-West of Sydney
More Crime On This Day →

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