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

On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford granted former President Richard M. Nixon a full and unconditional pardon, covering any federal crimes he may have committed while in office during the Watergate scandal. The pardon came just a month after Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, the first US president to do so, and it meant Nixon would never face criminal prosecution or trial over the affair.

Ford’s decision was hugely controversial, drawing accusations that a secret deal had been struck to spare Nixon accountability, and it is widely believed to have cost Ford the 1976 presidential election. No charges were ever brought against Nixon, and the pardon remains one of the most debated presidential acts in American history.

President Richard Nixon made of Wax. Wax figure Richard Nixon reading documents with american flag at desk | ID 59298060 © Lequint | Dreamstime.com — ID 59298060 © Lequint | Dreamstime.com

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Corruption Political Crime Scandal USA

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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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Hunters searching brush near Interstate 90 in Issaquah, Washington, about one mile from Lake Sammamish State Park, stumbled on fragmented human remains scattered across the ground. Forensic examination identified them as Janice Ott and Denise Naslund, two young women who had vanished from the park on the same afternoon in July 1974 after a man with his arm in a sling, calling himself Ted, asked each separately for help loading a boat onto his car.

Among the bones was one extra femur that did not belong to either woman. It was later attributed to Georgeann Hawkins, a University of Washington student who had disappeared weeks earlier while walking a short alley between her boyfriend’s dormitory and her sorority house, her body never otherwise found.

The discovery helped investigators connect a string of disappearances across Washington and Utah to the same killer, Ted Bundy, whose calm, disarming manner and use of a fake injury to lure victims would become one of the most chilling signatures in American criminal history.

Sammamish Lake and Mount Rainier in background near Seattle

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Cold Case Murder Serial Killer USA Washington

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The last known thylacine, a carnivorous marsupial, died in captivity at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. The animal is believed to have perished from neglect, left exposed to extreme temperatures after keepers failed to provide adequate shelter.

Thylacines once ranged across mainland Australia and New Guinea before vanishing there thousands of years earlier, surviving only in Tasmania. Relentless hunting, driven by bounties paid to farmers who blamed the species for livestock losses, combined with the introduction of invasive predators, drove the population to collapse. Benjamin’s death marked the extinction of the species, a loss that went largely unnoticed at the time and was only recognised in hindsight as the end of a unique Australian predator.

Thylacine mother with joey in pouch in Australian outback

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Animal Welfare Australia Disaster Extinction Hobart TAS

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