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

Harold Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998 after police investigated the death of his patient Kathleen Grundy, who had left him £386,000 in a will that turned out to be forged. The clumsy fake unravelled quickly: a Brother typewriter matching the one used to produce the document was found in Shipman’s possession, and Grundy’s own family, alarmed that their mother would never have cut them out, had already raised suspicions with a solicitor.

The arrest opened the door to a far larger inquiry. Detectives uncovered a pattern of lethal diamorphine injections administered to elderly patients under his care, alongside falsified medical records designed to make the deaths look natural.

Shipman was eventually linked to the deaths of at least 215 patients over more than two decades, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in British history.

Last will and testament typed on aged paper with vintage typewriter

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Fraud Murder Poisoning Serial Killer Trial UK

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On September 7, 1876, the Jesse James-Younger Gang rode into Northfield, Minnesota, intending to rob the First National Bank. Inside, cashier Joseph Lee Heywood refused to open the safe even as a revolver was pressed to his head and he was pistol-whipped; he was shot dead at his desk for his defiance, having falsely claimed the safe was on a time lock.

Outside, armed townspeople grabbed rifles and shotguns and opened fire from doorways and windows along the main street. Two of the raiders, Clell Miller and William Stiles, were killed in the street, and several others were wounded before the surviving gang members fled empty-handed.

A massive manhunt followed through the Minnesota countryside. Jesse and Frank James eventually broke away and escaped, but Cole, Jim and Bob Younger were tracked down two weeks later, badly wounded, and captured. The disastrous raid effectively destroyed the gang as a fighting unit and ended its run of successful robberies.

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Gang Manhunt Minnesota Murder Outlaw Robbery USA

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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.’

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Execution Murder Prison Serial Killer USA

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On the night of 6 September 1971, dairy farmer Clifford Bartholomew murdered ten members of his family at their Hope Forest property south of Adelaide, including his wife, seven children aged between four and 19, his sister-in-law and his infant nephew. When police arrived, Bartholomew was sitting calmly at the kitchen table drinking beer; one detective later described him as “cool, calm and collected.”

Bartholomew admitted the killings and was sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Despite the scale of the crime, he was released on parole in 1979 after serving just eight years.

Under the new identity Clifford Palmer, he rebuilt his life, remarried and became stepfather to seven children. He lived quietly until his death in 2002. Years later, his second family learned the full extent of his past and discovered that the man they had known as “Poppy Cliff” had been responsible for one of Australia’s worst family massacres.

Abandoned farmhouse with hangmans noose under dark sky

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Adelaide Australia Family Homicide Hope Forest Massacre Murder SA Trial

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