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

1306: The Murder That Ended the Premysl Dynasty

On 4 August 1306, Bohemian King Wenceslas III was stabbed to death in Olomouc, cutting short the reign of a young ruler who had held the crowns of Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland. He was just 16 years old. His death extinguished the male line of the Premysl dynasty, a royal house that had shaped Central Europe since the ninth century.

With no male heir, the dynasty that had produced kings across three kingdoms collapsed in a single moment of violence. The Luxembourg clan seized Bohemia; the Piasts took Poland. The age of Premyslid rule was over.

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Assassination Czech Republic Europe Medieval History Olomouc Poland Political Crime Royalty

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2002: Ian Huntley Lures Two Girls Into His Home and Murders Them

Ian Huntley, a caretaker at Soham Village College in Cambridgeshire, England, murdered ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman on 4 August 2002. Despite a history of sexual offending involving minors, Huntley had secured a position at the school. He used his girlfriend Maxine Carr’s connection to the girls, both pupils at the local primary school where Carr worked as a teaching assistant, to lure them inside his home as they walked past.

Carr provided Huntley with a false alibi for that night. Both were later arrested and tried. Huntley was convicted of double murder in 2003 and sentenced to two life terms. Carr was convicted of perverting the course of justice and served a portion of her sentence before release under a new identity.

Ian Huntley Lures Two Girls Into His Home and Murders Them

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Cambridgeshire Child Victim England Europe Murder Soham Trial UK

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1892: The Axe Murders That Made Lizzie Borden Infamous

On the morning of 4 August 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found hacked to death in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew, a self-made millionaire with an estate valued at $300,000, had built his fortune through furniture, property, and banking, yet kept a famously frugal household. Suspicion fell almost immediately on his younger daughter, Lizzie, a churchgoing Sunday school teacher and temperance advocate.

Lizzie Borden was tried for the axe murders of her father and stepmother and acquitted, with no one else ever charged. She spent the rest of her life in Fall River, dying of pneumonia in 1927 at age 66. The case never left the public imagination, inspiring films, plays, literary works, and one of the most enduring folk rhymes in American criminal history.

Portrait of Lizzie Borden 1890

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Cold Case Murder Trial Unsolved USA

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1870: Patrick Smith Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for the Murder of His Wife

Patrick Smith, a fisherman working the Yarra and Saltwater rivers, had subjected his wife Mary to years of brutal abuse at their home in Errol Street, Hotham (North Melbourne). Neighbours had witnessed repeated beatings and shocking cruelties; Mary herself had told those around her that she believed her husband would one day murder her. On 9 July 1870, after a day of drinking and quarrelling, a neighbour heard heavy blows, then silence, then Smith calling out ‘Mary, Mary, do get up.’ She was never seen alive again.

Smith was tried for the murder of his wife and convicted. He was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 4 August 1870.

Maribyrnong River at Brimbank Park in Victoria, Australia