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

John Crisp was already serving a life sentence for stealing four ducks and two turkeys when he was being escorted to the watch-house at Swanport by two constables. Within sight of the building, he drew a razor from his pocket and slashed the prosecutor, William Donohoo, across the face, a gash running from near his mouth almost to his left ear.

Crisp was tried and convicted of wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, and was hanged at Oatlands on this day in 1851. The second constable escorting him, a pensioner on his very first night of duty, resigned from the force the following day.

Razor Blades: Good for shaving...and for murder — Razor Blades: Good for shaving…and for murder

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Assault Australia Convict Era Execution Oatlands TAS Trial

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Abraham Munday, a shepherd working the east coast of Tasmania near Swansea, laced a rival shepherd’s flour with arsenic, hoping to kill George White. White survived only because the dose was so large it made him vomit it back up. An old man named Hamilton, who happened to share a piece of the poisoned bread while visiting the hut, was not so fortunate: the arsenic settled in his joints and left him crippled for life.

Munday was convicted and sentenced to death. He was hanged within the gaol at Oatlands on this day in 1857, and went to the scaffold badly shaken, not only by his fate but because the clergyman who had attended him in his final days, the Reverend Mr Ison, refused to walk up to the drop with him.

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Attempted Murder Australia Execution Poisoning TAS Trial

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Chechen militants had held hundreds of hostages inside a Moscow theatre for three days, the audience and performers alike trapped with explosives wired around the building. Negotiations dragged on with no resolution in sight, and the gunmen threatened to start killing captives if Russian forces did not withdraw from Chechnya.

Before dawn on this day in 2002, Spetsnaz special forces pumped an unidentified narcotic gas through the ventilation system and stormed the building. The assault killed the militants, but the gas proved just as deadly to the people it was meant to save: roughly 130 hostages died, most from the effects of the chemical agent rather than gunfire, and Russian authorities refused for years to disclose exactly what it was.

Special forces operator in black uniform moving through smoke

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Counterterrorism Europe Hostage Crisis Mass Death Moscow Russia Siege Terrorism

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The feud between the Earp brothers and the Clanton-McLaury outfit had been building for months over cattle rustling, stagecoach robberies and bad blood on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It ended in a vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral on this day in 1881, when Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, backed by the gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday, walked down to disarm a group of armed men they accused of flouting the town’s gun ban.

What followed lasted less than thirty seconds. Around thirty shots were fired at close range, leaving Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton dead in the dirt. Virgil and Morgan Earp were both wounded but survived, and the shootout became the most mythologised gun battle of the American West, replayed in films and folklore ever since.

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Arizona Gang Historical Crime Murder USA

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