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

On the evening of 3 September 2009, millionaire businessman Michael McGurk was shot dead in the driveway of his home in Cremorne, Sydney. His young son witnessed the killing. McGurk had been embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with property developer Ron Medich over a failed business deal.

The murder triggered one of the most complex organised crime investigations in New South Wales in years. Ron Medich was ultimately convicted in 2019 of arranging the killing, and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison.

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Australia Cremorne Gang Murder NSW Organised Crime Sydney Trial

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During the September Massacres of 1792, revolutionary crowds swept through Paris prisons and religious institutions, killing prisoners and others regarded as enemies of the Revolution.

At the Carmelite Convent, Roman Catholic clergy imprisoned for refusing to swear allegiance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy were brought out and killed, among them several bishops.

The violence formed part of a broader wave of extrajudicial executions that engulfed Paris over several days, as fears of counter-revolution and foreign invasion fed a climate of panic and vengeance.

Those killed at the convent were later recognised by the Catholic Church as the Martyrs of September and were beatified in 1926.

Engraving showing the massacre of Princess de Lamballe

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Europe Execution France Massacre Paris Political Crime Religion

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On Father’s Day, 2 September 1984, a heavily armed convoy of Comanchero motorcycle club members descended on the Viking Tavern car park in Milperra, a south-western suburb of Sydney.

The Comancheros had been at war with the newly formed Bandidos, a breakaway chapter, whose split from the Comancheros founder had curdled into open conflict. When both clubs converged on a swap meet that day, gunfire erupted in the car park. Seven people died, including a 14-year-old girl caught in the crossfire, and twenty-eight others were wounded.

The Milperra Massacre became the bloodiest single clash in the history of Australian outlaw motorcycle clubs.

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Australia Gang Milperra Murder NSW Organised Crime Sydney Trial

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In the early hours of 2 September 1666, a fire broke out at the Pudding Lane bakery of Thomas Farriner in the City of London. Driven by strong winds, the blaze consumed around 80 percent of the old city before it was brought under control on 6 September. Though attributed to an accident at the bakery, the disaster ignited a desperate search for culprits.

Robert Hubert, a French watchmaker from Rouen, confessed to starting the fire. His confession was riddled with impossibilities: he had not arrived in England until two days after the fire broke out, and he described throwing a fire grenade through a window at the Farriner bakery, which had no windows. With nationalism inflamed by the Second Anglo-Dutch War, a scapegoat was needed, and Hubert, a foreigner in a hostile city, was hanged for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.

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Arson Disaster Europe Execution London Political Crime UK Wrongful Conviction

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