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

1998: The Forged Will That Exposed Britain’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Doctor Harold Shipman

Harold Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998 after police investigated the death of his patient Kathleen Grundy, who had left him £386,000 in a will that turned out to be forged. The clumsy fake unravelled quickly: a Brother typewriter matching the one used to produce the document was found in Shipman’s possession, and Grundy’s own family, alarmed that their mother would never have cut them out, had already raised suspicions with a solicitor.

The arrest opened the door to a far larger inquiry. Detectives uncovered a pattern of lethal diamorphine injections administered to elderly patients under his care, alongside falsified medical records designed to make the deaths look natural.

Shipman was eventually linked to the deaths of at least 215 patients over more than two decades, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in British history.

Last will and testament typed on aged paper with vintage typewriter

⬅ See all events from 7 September

Fraud Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial UK

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1936: Neglect and Extinction: the Last Tasmanian Tiger Dies Alone at Hobart Zoo

The last known thylacine, a carnivorous marsupial, died in captivity at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. The animal is believed to have perished from neglect, left exposed to extreme temperatures after keepers failed to provide adequate shelter.

Thylacines once ranged across mainland Australia and New Guinea before vanishing there thousands of years earlier, surviving only in Tasmania. Relentless hunting, driven by bounties paid to farmers who blamed the species for livestock losses, combined with the introduction of invasive predators, drove the population to collapse. Benjamin’s death marked the extinction of the species, a loss that went largely unnoticed at the time and was only recognised in hindsight as the end of a unique Australian predator.

Thylacine mother with joey in pouch in Australian outback

⬅ See all events from 7 September

Animal Welfare Australia Disaster Extinction Hobart TAS

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1924: John Dillinger Commits His First Crime: A Robbery That Set a Legend in Motion

On 6 September 1924, twenty-one-year-old John Dillinger joined his friend Edgar Singleton in robbing a local grocer, Frank Morgan, as he returned home carrying the week’s takings. Dillinger struck Morgan with a cloth-wrapped iron bolt. Both men were arrested, but despite Dillinger having no prior record, he received the harsher sentence: between 10 and 20 years. Singleton, the experienced criminal who had planned the job, hired a lawyer and walked away with a lighter term.

Inside the Indiana State Reformatory, Dillinger kept his head down, worked as a seamster in the shirt factory, and carefully cultivated friendships with hardened criminals including Harry Pierpont, Homer Van Meter, and Charles Makley. These men would later form the core of the Dillinger gang. He later wrote to his father: ‘if I had gotten off more leniently when I made my first mistake this would never have happened.’

⬅ See all events from 6 September

Gang Organised Crime Prison Robbery USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1901: Leon Czolgosz Shoots President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot twice in the abdomen while shaking hands with the public at the Temple of Music during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. His attacker, 28-year-old Leon Czolgosz, was an anarchist who had lost his job in the Panic of 1893 and come to regard McKinley as a symbol of oppression. Despite appearing to recover initially, McKinley died on September 14 from gangrene caused by his wounds, becoming the third American president assassinated after Abraham Lincoln and James A. Garfield.

Czolgosz was convicted of first-degree murder within a month and executed by electric chair on October 29, 1901. McKinley was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. In the aftermath, Congress formally charged the Secret Service with protecting the president.

⬅ See all events from 6 September

Assassination Execution Murder Political Crime Trial USA

1998: The Forged Will That Exposed Britain’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Doctor Harold Shipman

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1936: Neglect and Extinction: the Last Tasmanian Tiger Dies Alone at Hobart Zoo

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1924: John Dillinger Commits His First Crime: A Robbery That Set a Legend in Motion

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1901: Leon Czolgosz Shoots President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Subscribe to Dark Stories