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

George Dean had already escaped the gallows once, pardoned after a Royal Commission cast doubt on the poisoning case against his wife, Mary. Then a North Shore chemist named Smith came forward, admitting he had sold Dean arsenic and strychnine after Dean claimed he needed a double dose and two poisons to deal with rats on his property.

On 5 October 1895 detectives approached Dean just as he stepped off his ferry at Sydney‘s Circular Quay, still dressed in his captain’s uniform, and arrested him again. “I wonder how many more times I shall be arrested over this affair,” he remarked, before going with the detectives.

Dean subsequently confessed in writing to poisoning his wife. He was convicted of perjury committed to procure his own acquittal and sentenced to fourteen years, while his former lawyer and others faced charges of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

George Dean lemon syrup case. Prison photograph. Credit: Museums of History NSW, State Archives Collection.

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Australia Conspiracy Murder NSW Perjury Poisoning Scandal Sydney Trial

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In Montreal in October 1970, armed members of the Front de Liberation du Quebec forced their way into the home of British trade commissioner James Cross and seized him at gunpoint, demanding the release of jailed militants in exchange for his life.

The kidnapping tipped Quebec into what became known as the October Crisis. Days later a second cell abducted and killed a provincial cabinet minister, and the federal government responded by invoking the War Measures Act, suspending civil liberties and deploying troops onto Canadian streets for the first time in peacetime history. Cross himself was held for weeks before his captors negotiated safe passage to Cuba in return for his release.

Riders on horseback wear red uniforms and carry flags as they participate in the Calgary Stampede Parade. The event showcases a vibrant display of local pride and community spirit. 07. 2023 - Calgary, Canada. | ID 460635341 © Kukotaekaterina | Dreamstime.com — ID 460635341 © Kukotaekaterina | Dreamstime.com

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Canada Kidnapping Montreal Political Crime Quebec Terrorism

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John Jones, a hutkeeper on a station near Mount Joy in South Australia’s remote Eyre Peninsula, was found dead in his hut in May 1860, his skull broken and the hut stripped of flour, tea and clothing. The accused was convicted at the Supreme Court in Adelaide largely on the testimony of a young companion who admitted taking part in the killing himself.

Before the execution, around 400 citizens, headed by the Lord Bishop of Adelaide, signed a memorial asking the government to remit the death sentence. He had been tried and condemned under British law newly imposed on his people, with little understanding of its workings; the petition failed regardless. He was taken back across the Eyre Peninsula and hanged at Streaky Bay on 5 October 1860, near the district where the killing had occurred

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Adelaide Australia Colonial History Execution Murder Petition for Clemency SA Streaky Bay Trial

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Harold Shipman was a trusted family doctor in Hyde, England, who killed his patients with lethal injections of diamorphine and then falsified their medical records to make the deaths look natural. He often urged grieving families toward cremation, quietly destroying the evidence a post-mortem might have found.

What he did not understand was his own surgery computer. The practice software secretly time stamped every entry, and when investigators compared those hidden timestamps to the dates on his altered files, the lie was obvious: he had been rewriting patient histories after his victims were already dead. He went on trial in 1999 charged with just 15 murders, though he is believed to have killed close to 250 patients over more than two decades, making him Britain’s most prolific serial killer.

Shipman never confessed and maintained his innocence throughout the trial. He was convicted on all counts and later took his own life in prison.

A Serial Killers Computer Log tracked everything.

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England Fraud Medical Crime Murder Serial Killer Trial UK

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