On September 19, 1980, Veronica Compton attempted to strangle a 26-year-old woman at a motel in Bellingham, Washington. The attack was part of a plot to convince authorities that imprisoned Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi was innocent—and that the real killer remained at large.

Bianchi had supplied Compton with a semen-filled condom concealed in the spine of a book. She was to plant its contents at the scene of a staged rape and murder, creating false evidence to cast doubt on his guilt. But the woman survived, and the scheme unravelled.

Compton was convicted of first-degree attempted murder in March 1981. She remained imprisoned until 2003.

Close-up of worn book spine titled Modern English Drama
Close-up of worn book spine titled Modern English Drama

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On the night of 19 September 1952, 22 year old Betty Shanks stepped off a tram at the Grange terminus in Brisbane and set off on the short walk home. She never made it and her body was found the next morning, in the front garden of a house just metres from her parents’ own home.

Despite an extensive police investigation and decades of renewed interest, no one was ever charged over her death. The case has become one of Queensland’s most haunting cold cases. A young woman killed almost within sight of her own front door, with her killer never identified.

Unsolved.
Unsolved.

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Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was abducted from her Berkeley apartment in February 1974 by the self-styled Symbionese Liberation Army, a small but violent radical cell. Within weeks the group released tapes in which she renounced her family and adopted the nom de guerre Tania, and in April 1974 she was photographed wielding a rifle during the SLA’s armed robbery of a Hibernia Bank branch in San Francisco.

For nineteen months Hearst remained with her captors turned comrades as the group moved between safe houses, evading one of the largest manhunts in FBI history. She was finally arrested in San Francisco on September 18, 1975, and later stood trial for bank robbery, where her defence argued she had been brainwashed and coerced.

Convicted despite that defence, Hearst was sentenced to prison, but her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

Patty Hearst hideout, Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco
Patty Hearst hideout, Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco

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At 4 a.m. on 25 July 1916, three revolver shots rang out at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. Joseph (Giuseppe) Lauricella, a 32 year old Carlton fruiterer buying tomatoes for his shop, fell dead with wounds to the head and neck. His killer, laborer Antonio Picone, fled through a market shed still clutching a smoking revolver before being tackled and held by a bystander, until police arrived.

Picone, wearing a military reject badge in his lapel, was hauled before the City Court that same day. When the charge was read he insisted, “I didn’t do it,” yet detectives testified he had already told them why he pulled the trigger: “He robbed me of my bread, disgraced me, ruined the whole of my life.”

Despite his courtroom denial, Picone had already given detectives his own account of the killing, telling them plainly it was revenge for the ruin of his livelihood and reputation. Picone was convicted of murder and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 18 September 1916.

Victoria Market Melbourne 1911 Still In Operation Today
Victoria Market Melbourne 1911 Still In Operation Today

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On This Day in True Crime History
1816·He Blamed His Mate for the Shot, But It Was His Own Gun That Fired: Triple Hanging in Sydney
1895·"Look, Jimmy": The Chilling Instant Before a Fatal Tomahawk Attack Near Mount Morgan, Hanged in Brisbane.
1895·"A Feeling of Relief": Hanged in Melbourne for Drowning a Family Member
1993·11-04 | 1993 Two More Victims Discovered: The Backpacker Murders in the Forest South-West of Sydney
More Crime On This Day →

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