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

1992: The First Victim of the Snowtown Bodies in Barrels Killers

In August 1992, John Justin Bunting bashed the first of what would become twelve murder victims to death with a hammer at his home in Salisbury North, north of Adelaide. Bunting, a former abattoir worker filled with deep hatred, led a cell of killers that included Robert Joe Wagner and James Vlassakis, operating across South Australia between 1992 and 1999.

The murders became known as the Snowtown or Bodies in Barrels case after eight of the twelve victims were found sealed in acid-filled barrels inside an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, 140 kilometres north of Adelaide. The trial was among the longest and most publicised in Australian legal history, ending with Bunting and Wagner convicted of multiple murders and Vlassakis, who confessed to four killings and testified for the Crown, receiving a lesser sentence.

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Adelaide Australia Murder Organised Crime SA Salisbury North Serial Killer Snowtown Trial

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1975: Ted Bundy Caught by a Wrong Turn: The Traffic Stop That Unmasked a Serial Killer

At 3 a.m. on 16 August 1975, Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Bob Hayward took a wrong turn leaving a subdivision and stumbled onto a tan Volkswagen Beetle parked outside a neighbour’s home. When his headlights hit the car, it fled, running dark through stop signs. When Hayward finally pulled the driver over, a search of the vehicle turned up handcuffs, an ice pick, a crowbar, and pantyhose with eye holes cut out. The missing front passenger seat only deepened suspicion. The driver was Ted Bundy, law school student, and by then already responsible for the deaths of at least 25 young women across four states.

Bundy was initially arrested for burglary. The items found matched restraints used in the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, who later identified Bundy in a lineup. He was convicted of her attempted kidnapping. Separately, detectives linked him to the February 1975 murder of Caryn Campbell, a 23-year-old nurse killed in Colorado. Charged with Campbell’s murder, Bundy was transferred to a jail in Aspen, Colorado, to stand trial. His girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, had reported her suspicions to police multiple times in 1974. Nobody had acted. A wrong turn finally changed that.

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

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Arrest Kidnapping Murder Serial Killer Trial USA

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1820: Rebecca Worlock Hanged at Gloucester Prison for Poisoning Her Husband

Rebecca Worlock, a 37-year-old mother of three from Oldland and Bitton in Gloucestershire, poisoned her husband Thomas with arsenic in April 1820. She had purchased the poison from a pharmacy at Kingswood Hill, telling a stranger she had enlisted to accompany her that it was not for rats but for her husband. Thomas died on 21 April after falling ill following a beer laced with the substance; a post-mortem confirmed poisoning and Rebecca was arrested.

Tried at Gloucester Assizes on 14 August 1820, the jury convicted her in just seven minutes. She was hanged at Gloucester Prison two days later, on 16 August, before a large crowd that had travelled from her home villages. Her body hung for an hour before being handed over to surgeons for dissection.

Worlock confessed to the murder before her execution.

Poison

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England Execution Gloucestershire Murder Poisoning Trial UK

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1963: Henry Burnett Hanged at Craiginches Prison, the Last Execution in Scotland

On August 15, 1963, Henry John Burnett was hanged at Craiginches Prison in Aberdeen by executioner Harry Allen, becoming the last person executed in Scotland and the first in Aberdeen since 1891. His crime: the murder of merchant seaman Thomas Guyan, shot in the face at close range after Burnett broke into the Guyan family flat on May 31, 1963, furious that his lover Margaret May Guyan had chosen to return to her husband.

Burnett had become obsessively controlling of Margaret, locking her in his flat at Skene Terrace when he went out. On the day of the murder, after she announced she was returning to Thomas, Burnett stole a shotgun from his brother’s home in the Bridge of Don area of Aberdeen, boarded a bus to Jackson Terrace, and shot Guyan dead. He was tried at the High Court in Aberdeen between July 23 and 25, 1963, convicted, and executed three weeks later. A crowd of around 200 gathered outside the prison gates.

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Aberdeen Execution Murder Scotland Trial UK

1992: The First Victim of the Snowtown Bodies in Barrels Killers

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1975: Ted Bundy Caught by a Wrong Turn: The Traffic Stop That Unmasked a Serial Killer

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1820: Rebecca Worlock Hanged at Gloucester Prison for Poisoning Her Husband

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1963: Henry Burnett Hanged at Craiginches Prison, the Last Execution in Scotland

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