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Half the police force in Melbourne walked off the job over a secret supervisory system that monitored beat officers usin...
01/11/2026

Half the police force in Melbourne walked off the job over a secret supervisory system that monitored beat officers using men drawn from their own ranks, derisively nicknamed 'spooks'. Hundreds of constables, many of them returned servicemen, refused duty rather than work under informants planted among their colleagues, and the government offered no guarantee against victimisation.

With the city effectively unpoliced, crowds poured out of Flinders Street station on the nights of 2 and 3 November 1923 and surged up Elizabeth and Swanston streets. Shop windows were smashed, stores stripped of merchandise, a tram overturned, and three people died in the chaos. The few police still on point duty were jeered and harassed until they retreated to the safety of the Town Hall.

Melbourne's papers rushed to blame the city's criminal underworld, but court records later told a different story: most of those arrested were ordinary young men and boys with no prior offences. Order was only restored when five thousand volunteer special constables, sworn in under the direction of Sir John Monash, took to the streets in armbands and badges to do the job the regular police had abandoned.

Follow the full This Day in True Crime History series at the link:
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Image: Melbourne Special Constables Volunteer during Police Strike: Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., 1923. State Library Vic, H2015.111/1

31st Oct 1861: They Dined on Stolen Ham While the Family Lay Bound: Thomas Sanders Hanged in Melbourne for a Farmhouse A...
30/10/2026

31st Oct 1861: They Dined on Stolen Ham While the Family Lay Bound: Thomas Sanders Hanged in Melbourne for a Farmhouse Attack

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 w**e 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 ex*****on crowd, 'I stand before you innocent of the offence for which I am about to die... I swear I am innocent.'

Follow the full This Day in True Crime History series at the link:
https://darkstories.com.au/on-this-day-in-true-crime-history/

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

Peter and Doug Morgan, identical twins born in regional Victoria on this day in 1953, grew up to pull off more than twen...
29/10/2026

Peter and Doug Morgan, identical twins born in regional Victoria on this day in 1953, grew up to pull off more than twenty armed robberies across the state as the so-called After Dark Bandit, a single figure police hunted for two years without ever suspecting he was two men. Wearing matching clothes and disguises, the brothers struck rural banks and betting shops in towns just twenty minutes apart, sending detectives chasing a suspect who seemed able to be in two places at once. Their habit of striking near closing time and escaping into the bush under cover of darkness earned them their nickname.

The ruse unravelled on 27 April 1979, when Peter robbed the Heathcote bank for a third time and shot veteran constable Ray Koch twice, leaving him fighting for his life. Fleeing into the bush as nearly two hundred officers swarmed the area, he resurfaced the next morning walking through Bendigo with a suitcase, telling a suspicious unarmed constable, Rick Hasty, that he was headed to Melbourne to watch the football. Inside the case Hasty found a sawn-off sh***un, stolen cash and an old man's mask. When Morgan drew a pistol, he was unable to fire it, and as Hasty pinned him against a wall, he reportedly said, 'You've got me, I just made you a hero.'

The investigation took another extraordinary turn when detectives searching Peter's farm discovered a photograph of him sitting beside another man with the same face, moustache and sideburns. Detective Patrick Brear realised the truth and telephoned his partner: the elusive After Dark Bandit was not one man but two. Peter had an identical twin brother, Doug, and the pair had been using their matching appearances to outwit police for nearly two years.

Follow the full This Day in True Crime History series at the link:
https://darkstories.com.au/on-this-day-in-true-crime-history/

Image: After Dark Bandit(s)

Just four days after three police officers were shot dead at Stringybark Creek, the Victorian government introduced the ...
29/10/2026

Just four days after three police officers were shot dead at Stringybark Creek, the Victorian government introduced the Felons Apprehension Bill on 30 October 1878, paving the way for extraordinary powers that would allow Ned Kelly and his gang to be declared outlaws.

Once Ned and his brother Dan were formally declared outlaws, they could legally be shot on sight by police or any member of the public, without first standing trial. The legislation also threatened severe penalties for anyone knowingly sheltering or assisting the fugitives.

The crackdown extended beyond the outlaws themselves. Police arrested suspected Kelly sympathisers, with around twenty men detained for months as authorities attempted to break the gang's network of support. The heavy-handed campaign fuelled resentment among sections of the local population, strengthening sympathy for the very men the government was determined to capture.

Even after the gang robbed banks at Euroa and Jerilderie, prompting Victoria and New South Wales to offer a combined reward of £8,000 in February 1879, the outlaws remained at large. It took another sixteen months, and the bloody siege at Glenrowan in June 1880, before Ned Kelly, wearing his homemade iron armour, was finally captured.

Follow the full This Day in True Crime History series at the link:
https://darkstories.com.au/on-this-day-in-true-crime-history/

Image: Troopers pursuing the Kelly Gang on horseback

29th Oct 1927: Squizzy Taylor Buried in Melbourne as a Morbid Crowd Forces Police to InterveneJoseph Theodore Leslie 'Sq...
28/10/2026

29th Oct 1927: Squizzy Taylor Buried in Melbourne as a Morbid Crowd Forces Police to Intervene

Joseph Theodore Leslie 'Squizzy' Taylor, Melbourne's most notorious gunman, had died days earlier in a shootout with rival criminal Cutmore. He was buried in a polished oak coffin with gold mountings at Brighton Cemetery on this day in 1927, while hundreds of onlookers, mostly women, crowded outside his Richmond home to watch the coffin leave.

What followed was described in the press as a disgraceful exhibition of morbid curiosity. Traffic was blocked for half an hour, and just before the funeral began a crowd surged at the gateway, forcing police to be called to clear a path. At the graveside few of Taylor's former associates could be seen among the throng of sightseers. Cutmore, the other man killed in the same gun battle, had been buried the previous day at Coburg.

Follow the full This Day in True Crime History series at the link:
https://darkstories.com.au/on-this-day-in-true-crime-history/

Image: The Squiz: Leslie 'Squizzy' Taylor, police identification photographs July 1924 [collection of the Public Record Office of Victoria, Central Register for Male Prisoners 31530 - 31927 (1907-1909)]

29th Oct 1880: Ned Kelly Sentenced to Hang in MelbourneNed Kelly, the leader of the Kelly Gang, had spent years outrunni...
28/10/2026

29th Oct 1880: Ned Kelly Sentenced to Hang in Melbourne

Ned Kelly, the leader of the Kelly Gang, had spent years outrunning the law across the Victorian bush, his armour and audacity turning him into both outlaw and folk hero. That ended after the siege at Glenrowan, where he was captured wounded and alone while the rest of his gang died in the shootout or the fire that followed.

He was tried in Melbourne for the murder of a police constable, and on this day in 1880 he was sentenced to death. Within weeks the man who had defied colonial police for years would be hanged, his legend only growing in the telling long after the rope did its work.

Follow the full This Day in True Crime History series at the link:
https://darkstories.com.au/on-this-day-in-true-crime-history/

Image: Ned Kelly in the dock courtroom illustration: colorised.

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