In August 1808, Charles Flynn stood before the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction in Sydney, charged with stealing from aboard the ship Hero, anchored in Sydney Cove. The stolen items were modest: two brass spy-glasses valued at 40 shillings and a table cloth valued at 10 shillings.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty. In the harsh legal climate of early colonial New South Wales, the theft was enough to send Flynn to the gallows. He was hanged on 28 August 1808.
On 27 August 1979, Lord Louis Mountbatten, 79, was killed when a bomb planted by the Provisional IRA detonated aboard his fishing boat, Shadow V, in the waters off Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland. The bomb, concealed on the vessel the night before, was remotely detonated as Mountbatten and family members set out from the harbour. Three others died in the blast, including his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and a 15-year-old local boy.
Thomas McMahon, an IRA bomb-maker, was arrested hours before the explosion on unrelated grounds and later convicted of the murders based on forensic evidence linking him to the boat. The attack was coordinated with the Warrenpoint ambush the same day, which killed 18 British soldiers, making 27 August 1979 one of the deadliest days for British forces during the Troubles.
At a charity ball in the Government House Ballroom in Perth on the night of 26 August 1925, Audrey Jacob, a 20-year-old art student, shot her former fiance Cyril Gidley through the heart in front of hundreds of revellers.
Gidley, a 25-year-old ship’s engineer, had ended their engagement months earlier, dramatically throwing the engagement ring into the sea. Audrey had attended the ball in costume as Pierrette, a lovesick clown; when Gidley ignored her all evening, she slipped away, changed into a striking blue evening gown, and returned. As the orchestra struck up an encore dance number, she approached him on the floor. A single shot rang out and Gidley collapsed without a word.
Audrey stood over the body, smoking gun in hand, and declared to the stunned crowd: ‘I did it. Take me away. It’s all right. I know what I’ve done.’ She claimed the gun discharged accidentally during a confrontation. The case became a media sensation and led to a landmark trial in which she was found not guilty.
Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906, in Plainfield, Wisconsin. He would become one of the most disturbing figures in American criminal history, a murderer and body snatcher whose crimes shocked the nation when they were uncovered in November 1957. Authorities searching his farm found the decapitated, mutilated body of hardware store owner Bernice Worden hanging upside down in a shed, dressed out like a deer. Gein had also been raiding local graveyards for years, fashioning keepsakes from the bones and skin of exhumed corpses.
Gein confessed to two murders: Worden in 1957 and tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954. Found legally insane, he was committed to a psychiatric institution and never stood trial. He died in 1984. His crimes inspired some of fiction’s most iconic killers in movie history.
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