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

William Tyndale committed one crime: he translated the New Testament into English so ordinary readers could understand it for themselves, defying a Church that insisted scripture remain in Latin and under clerical control. Hunted across Europe by agents loyal to Henry VIII’s government, he was finally betrayed and arrested in Antwerp.

Tried for heresy, he was condemned and taken to the fortress town of Vilvorde, where in October 1536 he was strangled at the stake and his body then burned. Within a few years, an English Bible drawing heavily on his translation was being placed in every parish church in the kingdom that had killed him.

According to tradition, his final words were a prayer rather than a protest: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

Portrait of William Tyndale from Foxes Book of Martyrs

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Belgium England Europe Execution Heresy Religious Persecution Trial

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At a one-teacher school in rural Victoria, two unemployed plasterers, Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland, burst in with a sawn-off shotgun and forced 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs and her six young pupils into a van, demanding a million dollar ransom. Victoria’s premier agreed to pay, and the education minister himself waited at the handover point with police hidden nearby, but the kidnappers never returned to collect it.

Left alone with the children overnight, Gibbs kicked out a door panel with her heavy platform boots and led the girls through the dark bush to safety. Eastwood and Boland were run down in a manhunt; Eastwood pleaded guilty and was jailed, while Boland was convicted after three trials.

It was not the end of the story. Eastwood escaped prison years later and staged a second mass kidnapping of a teacher and nine pupils, and while back behind bars he killed a fellow inmate in what was ruled self-defence.

White camper van parked on dirt pull-off overlooking rural hills

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Australia Escape Kidnapping Prison Ransom Trial VIC

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When Edwina Boyle vanished from her home on this day in Carrum Downs, in Melbourne‘s southeast, in 1983, her husband Frederick Boyle produced a note saying she had run off with a truck driver. His mistress moved in two days later, and neighbours pitied him for raising two daughters alone. All the while Edwina’s body sat metres away, sealed in a green metal barrel in the backyard where the family held parties and guests leaned against it without ever knowing.

The secret held for 23 years, until Boyle’s future son-in-law grew suspicious of his odd anxiety about the drum and cut it open, finding clothing, then later a hessian bag of human bones including a skull. Boyle was convicted of murder in 2008 and sentenced to 21 years, having shot his wife in the head.

He initially claimed he found her dead and panicked, but later admitted he strangled and shot her, telling the court, “my wife died in a terrible way and I was not going to let her remains be thrown down the tip like garbage”.

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Australia Carrum Downs Cold Case Domestic Violence Melbourne Murder Trial VIC

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In 1878, Constable Fitzpatrick arrived alone and drunk at the Kelly family homestead and assaulted fourteen-year-old Kate Kelly, the spark that turned her brothers Ned and Dan into outlaws. With her mother jailed as an accomplice, teenage Kate raised her younger siblings, campaigned for Ned’s clemency, and later toured with relics of the gang after his hanging at Melbourne Gaol in 1880.

Eighteen years on, now married and living near Forbes in New South Wales, Kate vanished from her home. She was found drowned in a nearby waterhole, aged 35. Her death was officially ruled an accident, but questions about what drove her there have never fully gone away.

Portrait of Kate Kelly sister of Ned Kelly

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Australia Bushranger Cold Case Forbes Melbourne Missing Person NSW Police Corruption VIC

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