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

1916: Knighted Diplomat Hanged for Treason After Failed Easter Rising Mission

Sir Roger Casement, the British consul who had been honoured for exposing colonial atrocities in the Congo and Peru, was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916. Once celebrated as the ‘father of twentieth-century human rights investigations’, he had spent the war years seeking German military support for the Easter Rising before being arrested on the Kerry coast just days before the uprising began.

Stripped of his knighthood, he was tried and convicted of high treason. During and after the trial, British intelligence circulated typescripts of private journals, said to be in Casement’s hand, that detailed homosexual activity. The material, illegal under the laws of the time, was used to undermine calls for clemency. He was executed at 49, and the authenticity of those diaries has been disputed by scholars ever since.

Portrait of Sir Roger Casement in formal attire

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Espionage Europe Execution Ireland Political Crime Treason UK

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1869: James Ritson Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of a Prison Chaplain

James Ritson, a prisoner at Pentridge Stockade already serving time for shooting a market inspector, killed the Reverend William Hill inside his solitary confinement cell in July 1869. Hill, the Wesleyan chaplain and superintendent of the second Wesleyan Circuit, had entered the cell alone to offer religious instruction. Ritson attacked him with a bed hinge he had wrenched free, battering in the chaplain’s skull. A warder heard Hill cry out “Mercy, man” but mistook it for prayer; by the time he forced the barricaded door open, Hill was dying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Hill had served the colony for fourteen years, was acting editor of the Wesleyan Chronicle, and left four young children orphaned, their mother having died only months earlier. He was buried at Melbourne Cemetery on 15 July 1869. Ritson, described at the time as a homicidal maniac, was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 3 August 1869.

The Late Reverend Hill

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Australia Execution Melbourne Murder Prison VIC

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1926: Royston Rennie Hanged at Perth for a Train Robbery Murder

On 3 June 1926, Royston Rennie boarded a train between East Perth and Perth stations and attacked two employees of the National Bank of Australasia who were transferring a large sum of banknotes from the Maylands branch to head office. He bludgeoned 15-year-old junior clerk Douglas Favas into unconsciousness and fatally shot senior clerk John Roger Greville, seizing the cash before fleeing. Rennie had spent weeks ingratiating himself with locals, posing as an aviator seeking work with W.A. Airways, and had borrowed a pistol from a Bassendean acquaintance under false pretences.

Tried before Justice Northmore, Rennie pleaded not guilty in a low but firm voice. The testimony of young Favas, himself a victim of the attack, proved decisive. The jury convicted, and Rennie was sentenced to death. He was executed at Perth on 2 August 1926.

Royston Rennie the gentleman killer from Perth executed in Fremantle

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Australia Execution Fremantle Murder Perth Robbery Trial WA

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1876: Wild Bill Hickok Shot Dead at the Poker Table in Deadwood

James Butler Hickok, known as Wild Bill Hickok, was shot and killed on August 2, 1876, while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. The killer was Jack McCall, an unsuccessful gambler who approached from behind and fired a single shot. Hickok, 39, had built a formidable reputation as a frontier lawman, Union army scout, marksman, and showman, though much of his legend rested on exaggeration, including his own.

The cards Hickok held at the moment of his death, two pairs of black aces and eights, passed into folklore as the dead man’s hand. McCall was initially acquitted but later retried, convicted, and hanged. Hickok remains one of the most mythologised figures of the American Old West.

Portrait photograph of James Hickok

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Assassination Gambling Murder Organised Crime USA

1916: Knighted Diplomat Hanged for Treason After Failed Easter Rising Mission

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1869: James Ritson Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of a Prison Chaplain

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1926: Royston Rennie Hanged at Perth for a Train Robbery Murder

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1876: Wild Bill Hickok Shot Dead at the Poker Table in Deadwood

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