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

Laura Ann Aime left a Halloween party in Lehi, Utah, on this day in 1974 and never made it home. Hikers found her body on the banks of a river in American Fork Canyon almost a month later, on Thanksgiving Day.

At the time, Ted Bundy was living nearby in Salt Lake City, studying law at the University of Utah, while already murdering women across the region. Before his 1989 execution in Florida, he confessed to killing her, but refused to give any detail, so investigators would not close the file on his word alone.

It took new DNA testing, decades later, to formally confirm his guilt, finally closing the case 51 years after Laura disappeared.

Exhibit with the Volkswagen of serial killer Ted Bundy. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, USA - December 18 2025: The Volkswagen of serial killer Ted Bundy in an exhibit the Alcatraz East Crime Museum | ID 426074004 © Raisamacouze | Dreamstime.com — ID 426074004 © Raisamacouze | Dreamstime.com

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Cold Case Execution Florida Missing Persons Murder Serial Killer USA Utah

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James Yardsley was drinking keg beer with fellow farm servants in a hut near Deloraine on the night of 26 July 1851 when, after a separate scuffle outside, he strode back in and told Robert Hudson he would be his “butcher to night.” He stabbed Hudson three times with a pocket knife while another labourer, Bush, wrestled for the blade and begged him to stop; Hudson collapsed with wounds to his chest, arm and back.

Convicted of wounding with intent to do bodily harm, Yardsley was hanged at Launceston on this day in 1851, the same port where he had landed as a transported convict sixteen years earlier.

When his employer confronted him that night, Yardsley answered flatly, “I’ve done it, and am willing to suffer,” and later said he was ready to “die on the gallows for it.”

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Attempted Murder Australia Convict History Deloraine Execution Launceston TAS Trial

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Kenneth Bianchi knew exactly what awaited him if convicted of the Hillside Strangler killings, so when police closed in he struck a deal: testify against his older cousin, Angelo Buono, and escape execution himself. The two men had spent months luring women across Los Angeles, assaulting and killing them, before Bianchi turned Crown witness against the very relative he had once called a partner.

On this day in 1983, both men were found guilty on the same day of multiple counts of assault and murder. Buono, despite his cousin’s testimony against him, also avoided death row and was sentenced to life without parole. Bianchi, for his cooperation, received a sentence of 118 years, his life spared by the words he gave up about his own family.

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

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Betrayal Crime Informant Los Angeles Murder Serial Killer Trial USA

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Deep in debt and facing the loss of his home and car, Ronald Clark O’Bryan took his eight-year-old son Timothy trick-or-treating through a Pasadena, Texas neighbourhood on this day in 1974 and slipped him a Pixy Stix laced with potassium cyanide. To make the poisoning look like the work of a stranger, he handed identically tainted candy to four other children, including his own daughter; none of them ate it. Timothy did, and died within the hour.

Investigators soon discovered O’Bryan had taken out roughly $100,000 in new life insurance on his two children in the months before the murder, and had tried to buy cyanide from a chemical supplier weeks earlier. A jury took under an hour to convict him of capital murder in 1975, and he was sentenced to death.

After years of delayed execution dates, O’Bryan was put to death by lethal injection in Huntsville on 31 March 1984, while a crowd outside shouted “Trick or treat!”

O’Bryan never confessed to the killing. In his final statement he called his own execution “wrong”, while insisting it did not mean the justice system that convicted him was at fault.

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Execution Houston Huntsville Insurance Fraud Murder Poisoning Texas Trial USA

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