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

Thomas Sanders and his accomplice, John Johnson, burst into a farmhouse at Keilor, outside Melbourne, and held the farmer, his pregnant wife and their teenage servant girl at gunpoint for six hours. They nailed the windows shut, hung the family’s double-barrelled gun out of reach, then settled by the fire to fry a stolen ham and drink the household’s wine and brandy while their captives sat bound and silent in the kitchen.

At trial, Sanders admitted his involvement in the robbery but disputed the evidence against him on the more serious charge. Both men were convicted, and Sanders was hanged on 31 October 1861. The rope had been improperly adjusted, leaving him struggling on the gallows for three minutes. He maintained his innocence of the capital offence to the end, declaring before the execution crowd, “I stand before you innocent of the offence for which I am about to die… I swear I am innocent.”

Cast-iron pan with pork belly cooking over a forest campfire

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Assault Australia Execution Home Invasion Melbourne Robbery Trial VIC

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Wilma McCann, a mother of four, left a Leeds nightclub to walk home on the night of 30 October 1975 and never made it back. She was found the next morning on a playing field, stabbed and beaten, the first of thirteen women Peter Sutcliffe would kill over the next five years as the Yorkshire Ripper evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in British police history.

The damage did not end with her death. In 2007, more than three decades later, her eldest daughter Sonia took her own life, never having recovered from losing her mother as a child. It meant the Ripper’s toll outlived his capture and his sentencing, reaching into a generation he never touched directly.

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England Leeds Murder Serial Killer Trial UK

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James “Whitey” Bulger ran Boston’s underworld for decades while secretly informing for the FBI, a betrayal that let his gang operate almost untouched. He vanished in 1994 after a tip-off from his own handler, spent sixteen years as a fugitive second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s most wanted list, and was finally captured in California in 2011. Convicted in 2013 of racketeering and involvement in eleven murders, he was handed two life sentences.

Five years later, the 89 year old and wheelchair bound Bulger was abruptly transferred to a high security prison in West Virginia, his medical status quietly downgraded just weeks earlier. He arrived on 29 October 2018. Within hours, on this day in 2018, he was found beaten to death in his cell, attacked with a sock wrapped padlock and a shiv so savagely a law enforcement official called him unrecognisable.

Mafia hitman Fotios Geas was later identified as the man behind the killing and in 2024 was sentenced to 25 years for voluntary manslaughter. A relative of one of Bulger’s own victims summed up the reaction of many: “He died the way I hoped he always was going to die.”

James Joseph Bulger Jr portrait photograph 1953

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Gang Murder Organised Crime Prison USA

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Ramon Novarro had been one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the silent era, hailed as the screen’s first Latin American leading man after his role in Ben-Hur made him a household name. By 1968 his career had faded, but two brothers, Paul and Tom Ferguson, had heard a rumour that he kept a fortune hidden somewhere in his Laurel Canyon home. The younger of the two got Novarro’s phone number from a former guest, called offering sexual services, and the pair talked their way inside.

When Novarro could not produce the money, because none existed, the brothers beat him for hours trying to force him to reveal where it was hidden. He died on 30 October 1968, choking on his own blood after the prolonged assault; the men left with just $20 taken from his bathrobe pocket. Both were convicted and served only a few years before being paroled in the mid-1970s.

Paul Ferguson denied responsibility for decades, but in a 1998 interview he finally admitted to killing Novarro.

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California Celebrity Crime Hollywood Los Angeles Murder Prison Robbery Trial USA

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