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

Texas outlaw William Preston Longley, known as Wild Bill, claimed he had once survived a lynching when a gunshot damaged the rope around his neck. The story remains unverified, but his actual execution would have a mishap of its own. On this date, Longley was hanged at Giddings for murdering Wilson Anderson. The rope was too long, allowing his feet to reach the ground beneath the scaffold. Officials had to haul him upwards to complete the execution, adding another strange chapter to a life already tangled in violence and legend.

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Execution Murder Outlaw Texas Trial USA

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After three days searching the moorland above Manchester, police uncovered the first grave. The discovery confirmed what detectives had feared since finding a body at Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s home: there were more victims. Eleven days later, searchers found a second grave. Another victim was never found. His mother spent the rest of her life searching for answers and returning to the moor, hoping to bring her son home.

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Cold Case England Manchester Missing Persons Murder Serial Killer Trial UK

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Geological surveyor Lamont Young, his assistant and three boatmen set out from Bermagui, New South Wales by night and would be last seen on this date, searching the coast for gold. Their boat would be found drifting empty near what would become known as Mystery Bay, its sail and anchor gone, loaded with heavy rocks, and a bullet hole through the hull.

What unsettled investigators most was not what was missing but what remained. A pair of spectacles sat neatly folded on a seat, none of the cargo was wet, and the holes in the planking had been punched outward from inside the boat, not in. No bodies, no weapon, and no sign of struggle were ever found, despite rewards, government inquiries and headlines across the British Empire. The five men were never seen again, and the mystery remains unsolved to this day.

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Australia Bermagui Cold Case Disappearance Mystery NSW Unsolved

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Eight-year-old Graeme Thorne was snatched walking to school in Sydney in 1960, just a day after his family’s lottery win made headlines. Six weeks later his body was found wrapped in a tartan picnic blanket on vacant land at Seaforth, still in his school uniform, gagged and bound with string.

Forensic scientists traced the blanket to one of only 3,000 ever woven at an Onkaparinga mill, then matched rare tree pollen and pink mortar scraped from the body to a single property at Clontarf, once home to a blue Ford, a Pekingese dog and a blonde-haired wife. By the time police reached the house, its occupant, Hungarian migrant Stephen Bradley, had already sailed for London with his family aboard the SS Himalaya. Two Sydney detectives were waiting for him when the ship docked at Colombo, and he was brought back to face extradition and trial.

Forensic hair evidence collected at crime scene

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Australia Colombo Extradition Forensic Science Kidnapping Manhunt Murder NSW Sri Lanka Sydney

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