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

1792: Five Days of Mob Killing End as the September Massacres Claim Half of Paris Prisons

Over five days in September 1792, mobs stormed nine prisons across Paris and carried out mass summary executions of those held within. The killings were brutal in their indiscriminate reach: roughly half the prison population was slaughtered before the violence finally subsided.

An estimated three-quarters of the victims were not political prisoners at all, but common criminals, forgers, women, and children. The September Massacres remain one of the darkest episodes of the French Revolutionary period.

Engraving showing the massacre of Princess de Lamballe

⬅ See all events from 6 September

Europe France Mass Killing Massacre Paris Political Crime Riot

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1991: Pee Wee Gaskins Executed for a Murder Committed Behind Bars

Donald Henry Gaskins Jr., known as Pee Wee Gaskins, was executed in the electric chair at Broad River Correctional Institution in South Carolina at 1:10 a.m. on 6 September 1991, aged 58. A serial killer confirmed to have murdered at least thirteen people between 1970 and 1975, including six teenagers and a two-year-old, he had originally been sentenced to death in 1976 for one of eight bodies found buried near his home in Prospect, South Carolina. That sentence was overturned, and he pleaded guilty to nine murders in exchange for life imprisonment.

His second death sentence came after he murdered a fellow death row inmate, Rudolph Tyner, using C4 explosive while incarcerated at Central Correctional Institution in Columbia. Hours before his execution, Gaskins attempted suicide by slitting his wrists. He claimed to have killed 110 people, a figure widely dismissed by law enforcement and journalists as a bid for notoriety.

His last words were: ‘I’ll let my lawyers talk for me. I’m ready to go.’

⬅ See all events from 6 September

Execution Murder Prison Serial Killer USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1994: NSW Politician John Newman Shot Dead Outside His Cabramatta Home

At 9:30 pm on 5 September 1994, Labor MP John Newman was shot twice and killed instantly in the car park of his Woods Avenue home in Cabramatta, in the western suburbs of Sydney.

His fiancee, Lucy Wang, was present but saw little due to the speed of the attack; she reported a hooded man in an army-style jacket who fired four shots and fled in a waiting car. Newman had represented Cabramatta in the NSW Legislative Assembly since 1986 and had campaigned aggressively against organised crime and drug trafficking in the area. Newman was later given a state funeral. He was 47 years old.

Grey car parked in front of a garage at night

⬅ See all events from 5 September

Assassination Australia Cabramatta Gang Murder NSW Organised Crime Political Crime Sydney

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1877: Crazy Horse Fatally Bayoneted at Fort Robinson

Crazy Horse, the celebrated Lakota war leader who had helped defeat George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn just a year earlier, was fatally stabbed with a bayonet at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, on 5 September 1877. He was 36 years old.

He had surrendered to U.S. Army forces earlier that year, ending years of armed resistance on the northern plains. Brought to the fort under the pretence of a meeting, he was seized and stabbed during a struggle, dying that night. The killing marked the end of one of the most formidable military careers in the history of the Lakota people.

Crazy Horse and his band of Indians on their way to surrender (1877)

⬅ See all events from 5 September

Assassination Military Political Crime USA War Crime

1792: Five Days of Mob Killing End as the September Massacres Claim Half of Paris Prisons

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1991: Pee Wee Gaskins Executed for a Murder Committed Behind Bars

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1994: NSW Politician John Newman Shot Dead Outside His Cabramatta Home

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1877: Crazy Horse Fatally Bayoneted at Fort Robinson

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Subscribe to Dark Stories