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1863: The Escape-Proof Prison That Wasn’t: Captain Thunderbolt Breaks Out of Cockatoo Island

Frederick Wordsworth Ward, the bushranger known as Captain Thunderbolt, was serving time on Sydney‘s Cockatoo Island, a prison ringed by harbour currents and sheer sandstone cliffs and widely declared impossible to escape. On the night of 11 September 1863, Ward slipped his cell and plunged into the water, swimming through the cold, shark infested harbour to the mainland shore.

The breakout humiliated colonial authorities and turned Ward into a folk figure almost overnight. He spent the next seven years roaming the bush of northern New South Wales, robbing coaches, inns and travellers as one of the colony’s most enduring and elusive bushrangers before he was finally shot dead by police near Uralla in 1870.

Cockatoo Island, Sydney, 1951. Photograph by Frank Hurley. National Library of Australia, PIC FH/7951. Out of copyright.

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Australia Bushranging Escape NSW Prison Robbery Sydney

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1931: Stabbed Like His Hero Julius Caesar: the Assassination of a Mafia Boss

Salvatore Maranzano, nicknamed Little Caesar for his fascination with Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, had built a criminal empire in Brooklyn behind the front of a real estate brokerage, running bootlegging, prostitution and narcotics rackets. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and married to Elisabetta Minore, he was sent to New York to seize control of Mafia operations for his Sicilian backers.

In 1930, he went to war with rival boss Joe Masseria, sparking the Castellammarese War. Maranzano secretly convinced Masseria’s own lieutenant, Lucky Luciano, to betray him, and after a lunch at a Coney Island restaurant on April 15, 1931, Masseria was gunned down.

Maranzano emerged as capo di tutti capi, the boss of all bosses, and reorganised New York’s underworld into the Five Families. His triumph lasted only five months. After plotting to have Luciano killed, Maranzano discovered too late that Luciano had moved first. On September 10, 1931, four gunmen posing as government agents entered Maranzano’s Manhattan office and shot and stabbed him to death, dying in a manner fittingly similar to the fate of his idol, Julius Caesar.

Angry mobsters firing a submachine gun near an antique car

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Assassination Mafia Murder New York Organised Crime USA

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1851: Too Many Escapes: Maitland Gaoler Dismissed, Replaced by a Darlinghurst Turnkey

Just three years after Maitland Gaol had officially opened its gates in 1848, its first gaoler, James Cox, was sacked. So many prisoners had slipped out under his watch that on 10 September 1851 the authorities removed him from the post entirely.

His replacement was John Wallace, formerly principal turnkey at Darlinghurst Gaol in Sydney, who took over as gaoler at Maitland. His wife, Mrs Wallace, was installed alongside him as the gaol’s matron, a husband and wife team brought in to tighten a prison that had already earned a reputation for losing its inmates.

Warder guards wall after prisoner escape attempt at Maitland Gaol 1940

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Australia Corruption Darlinghurst Escape Maitland NSW Prison Scandal Sydney

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1996: The Menendez Brothers Split Up: Sent to Separate Maximum-Security Prisons

After their conviction for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home, the California Department of Corrections classified Lyle and Erik as maximum-security inmates and separated them, ending years of the brothers being held together. Lyle was sent to the California Correctional Institution near Tehachapi, while Erik was sent to California State Prison near Sacramento.

The brothers had initially told police that intruders, possibly connected to organised crime, were responsible for the killings. Suspicion grew after investigators noted their lavish spending in the months following the murders and discovered they had hired a computer expert to delete their father’s recently updated will. Erik ultimately confessed to the killings during sessions with his psychologist, describing a desire to escape a controlling father’s demanding expectations, a disclosure that led to both brothers’ arrests.

Beverly Hills sign in Hollywood, Los Angeles against a blue cloudy sky | ID 1216184 © Stephen Coburn | Dreamstime.com — ID 1216184 © Stephen Coburn | Dreamstime.com

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California Murder Prison Trial USA

1863: The Escape-Proof Prison That Wasn’t: Captain Thunderbolt Breaks Out of Cockatoo Island

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1931: Stabbed Like His Hero Julius Caesar: the Assassination of a Mafia Boss

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1851: Too Many Escapes: Maitland Gaoler Dismissed, Replaced by a Darlinghurst Turnkey

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1996: The Menendez Brothers Split Up: Sent to Separate Maximum-Security Prisons

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