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

On 14 September 1862, two bushrangers robbed a mailman near Mudgee in New South Wales. They let him keep his sixpence and his pipe. His horse and the mail went with them.

But one robber gave himself away when his crepe mask slipped. The mailman caught a glimpse of his face and believed he could identify him as the infamous bushranger Fred Lowry.

The mail run offered little chance of real profit. Some suspected the hold-up was a decoy to draw police away from a bigger job. News of an armed horse robbery nearby fed the theory, though the report established no connection.

Less than a year later, Lowry died after being shot by police. He reportedly asked that his brother-in-law be told “Tell ’em I died game”.

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Australia Bushranging Cassilis Crime Mudgee NSW Robbery

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Martha Rendell, de facto wife of Thomas Nicholls Morris, was convicted in the Supreme Court of Western Australia at Perth of the wilful murder of her partner’s son, Arthur Joseph Morris, and sentenced to death by hanging. The court accepted that Thomas Morris had been unaware of what Rendell was doing until after the deaths of the children, and he was acquitted.

Acting Chief Justice Robert McMillan told the jury it was probably the most anxious case he had ever presided over, and voiced concern that newspaper coverage, might have prejudiced their judgement. Rendell maintained her innocence throughout, insisting she had only been treating the children for diphtheria.

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Australia Execution Murder Perth Poisoning Trial WA

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Nine week old Azaria Chamberlain vanished from her family’s tent at a campsite near Ayers Rock on the night of 17 August 1980. Her mother, Lindy Chamberlain, said she had seen a dingo leaving the tent, and the baby’s blood stained jumpsuit was found nearby days later, but her body was never recovered. A first inquest in 1981 accepted the dingo account and found no evidence of foul play.

That finding was overturned on appeal, and a second inquest opened on 13 September 1982, reopening a case that had already divided the country. This inquest went the other way, committing Lindy Chamberlain for trial on a charge of murder, a reversal that would send her to prison and make her one of the most publicly vilified women in Australian history.

Lindy Chamberlain was convicted later that year and sentenced to life imprisonment, but the case unravelled in 1986 when a piece of Azaria’s matinee jacket was found near a dingo lair, corroborating the original account. She was released and eventually exonerated, and a fourth inquest in 2012 formally confirmed that a dingo had taken and killed the child.

Australian dingo standing in bushland setting

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Australia Cold Case Exoneration Miscarriage of Justice NT Trial

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On Friday 13th September 1973, 20-year-old David McGreavy was left babysitting the three Ralph children in Worcester while their parents were out. He killed all three.

McGreavy then took a pick-axe to the bodies before impaling the remains on the wrought iron fence spikes of the house next door, where they were discovered by neighbours. The killings, carried out on the date now inseparable from bad luck and horror folklore, later fed the case’s grim nickname as Britain’s real life Friday the 13th murders. McGreavy was convicted and given three life sentences.

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Murder Prison Trial UK Worcester

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