Archives: Dark Stories: On This Day In True Crime History - Page 9
1826: Escaped Convicts Turned Highway Robbers: Two Hanged After Fleeing Macquarie Harbour
John Taylor and George Waters had absconded from the notorious penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour, Van Diemen’s Land’s infamous secondary punishment station for repeat offenders, before turning to highway robbery. Their crime involved robbing soldiers of their arms, a particularly bold offence that ultimately led to their conviction.
Both men were sentenced to death on 2 September 1826 and hanged together at Hobart just eleven days later, on 13 September 1826.
British Army drum and muskets historical military equipment
1826: A Colonial Newspaper Pleaded for Mercy: Two Men Hanged at Hobart for the Murder of a Stock-Keeper
Thomas Colley, a stock-keeper at Oyster Bay in Van Diemen’s Land, was speared to death in 1826. Contemporary reports said the elder of the two Aboriginal men accused had concealed himself behind a fence, waited for his opportunity, then speared Colley. Both men were also charged in connection with the wounding of Colley’s employer.
Before trial, the elder man was reported to be suffering from leprosy and was kept apart from the other prisoners. During the hearing, he reportedly attempted to show that he did not understand English, although evidence was given that he spoke the language with reasonable ease.
Both men were convicted. At sentencing, one denied killing Colley and said the other man had thrown the spear, while his co-accused made no statement. Sentence of death was passed on 2 September 1826, and both men were hanged at Hobart on 13 September.
A contemporary newspaper questioned whether Aboriginal Tasmanians, with little or no knowledge of British law or Britain’s claim to their land, should be subjected to a legal system imposed by colonists. It also argued that the executions would have little deterrent effect, since other Aboriginal people were unlikely to witness them or even hear of them, and appealed for the condemned men’s lives to be spared.
Antique silver pocket watch resting on a vintage newspaper
Aileen Wuornos had already established a deadly pattern along Florida’s highways, targeting men she encountered while working as a sex worker and hitchhiking around the state. Her fifth known victim was a 56-year-old retired police chief. After disappearing, his body was found on September 12 in an isolated area of Marion County. He had been shot seven times in the head and torso with Wuornos’s .22-calibre revolver.
By this stage, Wuornos’s killings had moved well beyond the disputed circumstances surrounding her first victim, Richard Mallory, whose death she maintained had been in self-defence. This latest killing formed part of an escalating pattern that would claim one more victim before police arrested her in January 1991, bringing to an end one of America’s most notorious female serial killing sprees.
Prisoner handcuffed during lethal injection with syringe and vial
1982: A Death Row Killer for Hire: Bomb in the Radio Speaker
Serial killer Donald Gaskins, already condemned to die at Central Correctional Institution, murdered fellow death row inmate Rudolph Tyner using a homemade bomb built from C4 plastic explosive concealed inside a device disguised as a portable radio speaker. The device was passed to Tyner and detonated, killing him instantly.
Gaskins carried out the killing as a paid hit, hired for 2,000 dollars by Tony Cimo, the son of a couple Tyner had murdered years earlier. Cimo wanted revenge on his parents’ killer and used Gaskins, already notorious as one of South Carolina’s most prolific murderers, to get it from inside the prison itself.
Mobster planting a time bomb in a car engine compartment
