On This Day in True Crime History — 24 October
True Crime Anniversaries: executions, verdicts and violent ends from this dark day in history
“Thank You, My Lord, I Am Very Glad of That Sentence”: Bushrangers Hanged in Melbourne
Henry Bradley and Patrick O’Connor absconded from assigned service in northwestern Tasmania and broke into a settler’s homestead on the night of 14 September 1853, tying up the household room by room. When the owner escaped through a window, the pair turned on his young relation, Alfred Phillips, and shot him dead as he begged them to spare the women and children.
To vanish from the island, they forced the crew of the schooner Sophia to sea at gunpoint, keeping a hostage tied to the mast until they reached Victorian waters. There they kept robbing, wounding one man near Brighton, until a police patrol cornered them near Kilmore. In the gunfight that followed, Bradley and O’Connor shot mounted Cadet Thompson through the chest; captured the next day after a second running battle, they boasted to their captors of already having killed six people back in Van Diemen’s Land.
Convicted of shooting Thompson, both men were hanged together in Melbourne on 24 October 1853.
On the scaffold, Bradley said he was willing to die and had already dictated a letter confessing the full extent of his crimes; O’Connor remained defiant to the end, refusing to join seriously in the priest’s prayers.
He Swore to Shoot Whoever Bought His Farm, and Kept His Word: Hanged in Melbourne
William O’Brien lost his Lancefield farm when the Commercial Bank foreclosed on his mortgage, and he swore to shoot whoever dared buy it next. Two years later, farmer Peter McAinsh took up the land anyway. On 24 July 1884, McAinsh left a local hotel for the walk home and was found dead on a dark road, shot in the head and groin, a bottle of gin still cradled under his arm.
Suspicion fell on O’Brien at once. Aboriginal trackers brought in from Queensland followed boot prints from the murder scene straight to his hut and back again, while a recently fired gun and matching shot were found inside. After a five-day trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death.
O’Brien was hanged in Melbourne on this day in 1884. The night before, he thanked the gaol staff for their kindness, warning he might be nervous on the drop; on the scaffold, asked if he had anything to say, he answered only “nothing” and bowed his head before the bolt was drawn.
“The Only Man on the Station That I Liked”: Hanged in Brisbane for a Torres Strait Murder
Charles Gleeson was cook at a shelling station on Prince of Wales Island in the Torres Strait, and Patrick McKiernan, by his own later account, was the only man there he actually liked. That did not stop him shooting McKiernan dead with a stolen shotgun one Wednesday morning that May, then wandering the bush armed until Water Police talked him into surrendering, backed by a settler on horseback who held him at gunpoint.
Gleeson was quiet and composed when brought before a magistrate, offering no reason for the killing. He was convicted and hanged in Brisbane on 24 October 1892, sharing the scaffold with William Moncado, condemned separately for the murder of a ship’s boy at Thursday Island; witnesses said Gleeson twitched convulsively for ten minutes before he died.
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“Poor Paddy, the only man on the station that I liked, and now I have shot him,” he said when shown the body, the closest thing to an explanation he ever gave.
A Mutilated Body in a Trunk: Sailor Hanged in Brisbane for Murder at Sea
Leonardo Moncado was a Chilean sailor aboard the trading schooner Sketty Belle when he killed a young cabin hand known as Bob during a voyage off Thursday Island. No trace of the victim was ever found except a mutilated portion of his body, discovered stuffed inside Moncado’s own trunk. One crewman who witnessed the victimes final moments stayed silent for months, having been threatened by Moncado, and only told police the truth once Moncado was committed for trial.
Moncado was convicted of murder and hanged in Brisbane on this day in 1892, attended on the scaffold by a Catholic priest.
George Dean, Pardoned for Poisoning His Wife, Convicted of Perjury in Sydney
George Dean, captain of a Sydney harbour ferry celebrated for pulling drowning passengers from the water, was sentenced to death in 1895 for poisoning his wife, Mary, with arsenic and strychnine hidden in lemon syrup and tea. No one could prove he had ever bought the poison, and a public outcry over the verdict forced a Royal Commission, which found the evidence wanting; Dean walked free with a pardon that June.
The relief did not last. His own lawyer admitted to a former Chief Justice that Dean had privately confessed his guilt, and a North Shore chemist came forward swearing he had sold Dean the poison himself, with no entry ever made in the sale book. Dean was arrested again and confessed in writing.
On 24 October 1895 he was convicted of making a false declaration and sentenced to five years. The following day a second conviction, for perjury committed to procure his own acquittal on the capital charge, added fourteen years, the terms to run concurrently.
Fifty Notebooks of Confession: the Trial of Dennis Nilsen Begins
Dennis Nilsen’s trial opened on this day in 1983, more than a year after police finally traced human remains blocking the drains outside his London home. He had preyed on homeless and vulnerable men he met in pubs, luring them back to his flat before killing them, and once arrested he confessed with chilling thoroughness, filling fifty notebooks with the details of his crimes.
Charged with killing 15 men, Nilsen entered a plea of not guilty by reason of diminished responsibility as proceedings began, arguing that a disturbed mental state, not deliberate will, lay behind the killings.
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Originally published on Dark Stories.
