Timeline of major crimes in Australia

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Timeline of major crimes in Australia

Contents

[edit] 1800s

[edit] 1820s

[edit] 1830s

[edit] 1840s

  • October - November 1848 (Approx.) - Avenue Range murders (or massacre) - a farmer and an employee were reported to have killed nine Aboriginal women, children and an old, blind man. The farmer was arrested, charged and tried, but never convicted due to lack of evidence. The other man escaped South Australia on a south sea whaling ship.

[edit] 1850s

[edit] 1860s

[edit] 1870s

  • 1878, - Bushranger Ned Kelly raids a bank in Euroa and, at a nearby sheep ranch, hosts a party for his 22 hostages shortly afterwards.
  • October 1878, - Stringybark Creek Massacre - Victorian bushrangers the Kelly Gang ambush and kill three police officers at Stringybark Creek

[edit] 1880s

  • 26 June 1880, - Joe Byrne shoots dead Aaron Sherritt for giving the police information about the Kelly Gang in exchange for money.
  • 27 June 1880, - Ned Kelly's Last Stand - The Kelly Gang hold the town of Glenrowan, Victoria hostage at the town's inn in an attempt to ambush police. The attempt fails and a siege ensues on the 28th, during which three members of the gang and at least one young boy are killed, and Ned Kelly is captured.
  • 11 November 1880, - Ned Kelly is hanged at the Melbourne Gaol.
  • 23 November 1880, - 12 days after the hanging of Ned Kelly, Judge Redmond Barry who sentenced Kelly to death, falls ill and dies.
  • 16 May 1881, - Police Trooper Harry Pearce was viciously attacked by a prisoner, Robert Johnson with a knife while on escort to Kingston SE. Pearce died of his injuries on 19 May, the second South Australian policeman to die while on duty. Johnson was executed at Mount Gambier Goal on 18 November the same year.

[edit] 1890s

[edit] 1900s

[edit] 1900s

  • July 16, 1911 - Scott Street Tragedy - Timothy Daly is gunned down on a street in Newcastle, New South Wales. A policeman on a passing streetcar is first to the scene.
  • Jan 1, 1915 Two men flying a Turkish flag attacked a picnic train near Broken Hill. Both attackers were shot dead. Four other people were killed and seven wounded.

[edit] 1920s

  • 21 December 1921 - Gun Alley murder - 12 year old Alma Tirtschke is raped and murdered in Gun Alley, Melbourne. 28 year-old Colin Ross was hanged for the crime, but in 1992 was proved innocent (unsolved).
  • May 1926 - Forrest River massacre - Western Australia - 11 people murdered in a series of punative raids after the murder of a pastoralist, was speared and killed in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
  • April 1927 - Newcastle Tragedy - Mary Buckley is slain by her husband at their Newcastle townhouse while she sleeps in the same bed as their 16-year-old daughter.
  • August 1928 - Coniston massacre - Northern Territory police constable William Murray leads a series of raids on Aboriginal tribes in response to the murder of a local dingo trapper (official death toll 31, but believed to be much higher)
  • December 1929 - May 1930 - The Murchison Murders - Snowy Rowles murders three men in Outback Western Australia using a method being discussed by novelist Arthur Upfield for a forthcoming book.

[edit] 1930s

[edit] 1940s

[edit] 1960s

[edit] 1970s

[edit] 1980s

[edit] 1990s

Port Arthur Prison Colony, site of the Port Arthur massacre
Port Arthur Prison Colony, site of the Port Arthur massacre

[edit] 2000s

[edit] 2000s

  • February, 2000 - Katherine Knight - Knight murders, skins and partially cooks her defacto husband John Price in Aberdeen, New South Wales
  • Winter, 2000 - Sydney gang rapes - A series of apparently racially-motivated gang rapes against teenage girls sweeps Sydney's west
  • 23 June, 2000 - Childers Palace Fire - Robert Long sets fire to a backpacker's hostel in Childers, Queensland. 15 people are killed.
  • July 10, 2001 - Sef Gonzales - Stabs and kills his father Teddy, mother Mary, and sister Clodine, within 2 and a half hours in their North Ryde home in Sydney, NSW.
  • 14 July 2001 - British tourists Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio are assaulted near Barrow Creek, Northern Territory by Bradley John Murdoch. Falconio is never found and Murdoch is subsequently found guilty of his murder.
  • 4 April 2002 - Society Murders. Matthew Wales murders his mother Margaret Wales-King and stepfather Paul King and buries them in a shallow grave in Victoria.
  • June, 2002 - Moorebank Hotel shooting. Security guard Karen Brown shoots and kills armed robber William Aquilina after he violently bashes her and steals the hotel's takings in a Sydney carpark. Brown is charged with murder but acquitted on self defence grounds.
  • 21 October, 2002 - Monash University shooting - Huan Xiang opens fire in a tutorial room, killing two and injuring five.
  • April, 2003, Pong Su incident - North Korean freighter boarded after four-day chase and taken into custody in connection with worldwide heroin smuggling operation.
  • 14 February 2004 - 2004 Redfern riots - Aboriginal youths riot against police in response to the death of 17-year old TJ Hickey. Hickey had allegedly accidentally impaled himself on a fence while fleeing police he mistakenly believed were pursusing him.
  • 23 March, 2004 - Sharpe family murders, Husband murdered his family with a spear gun.
  • 11 February 2005 - Maria Korp murder - Melbourne woman found in a coma in the boot of her car. Her husband and his lover are subsequently charged with her murder after Mrs Korp's life-support is switched off.
  • 26 February - 1 March, 2005 - Macquarie Fields riots - residents of the south western Sydney suburb riot in response to the deaths of two youths during a police pursuit. The youths were passengers in a stolen car being driven by a known criminal. Residents believed police were unfairly persecuting local youth.
  • 1 June, 2005 - Indonesian embassy bioterrorism hoax
  • November 2005 - Sydney teenager Lauren Huxley is bashed and set alight in her home
  • December 2005 - 2005 Cronulla riots - rioting by European Australians and people of Middle Eastern origin directed against each other sparked by the reported bashing of Surf Life Savers the previous week by several individuals of "middle-eastern appearance"; retaliatory and counter-retaliatory violence continued for two weeks.
  • 31 January 2006 - Youbert Hormozi murder - Two 14-year old girls rob and murder a disabled taxi driver in Sydney's west
  • 18 February 2006 - Cardross Hit and Run - Graham Thomas Towle crashes his car at high speed into a group of 13 teenagers, instantly killing five, and injuring eight, near the town of Cardross, Victoria[13].
  • 26 June, 2006 - Canning Vale murder - 8 year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu is raped and murdered in a suburban Perth shopping mall by Dante Wyndham Arthurs
  • 5 June 2007- Tony Mokbel arrested - Convicted drug trafficker Tony Mokbel is arrested in Athens, Greece after fleeing Australia in March 2006 during his trial for the importation of cocaine.
  • 18 June 2007- Melbourne CBD shooting - A man shoots three people, killing one and seriously wounding two others. The gunman was assaulting his girlfriend at a busy Melbourne intersection during the morning peak when two men intervened. Christopher Wayne Hudson gave himself up to police in Wallan, Victoria on 20 June[14].

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Baxter, Carol Breaking the Bank: An Extraordinary Colonial Robbery, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2008 ISBN 978 1 74175 449 0
  2. ^ Corfield, Justin, Wickham, Dorothy, Gervasoni, Clare, Ballarat Heritage Services, The Eureka Encyclopaedia, 2004 ISBN 1-876478-61-6
  3. ^ Note: Massacre
  4. ^ Whiticker, Alan J. (2005). Twelve Crimes That Shocked the Nation. pp12 - 25. ISBN 1-74110-110-7
  5. ^ Whiticker. pp 26 - 41
  6. ^ Whiticker. pp 42 - 55
  7. ^ Mackay, Donald Bruce (1933 - 1977), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University
  8. ^ http://members.tripod.com/hilton_bombing/index.html Behind the Hilton Bombing
  9. ^ [1], Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2002
  10. ^ http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/milat/discovery_1.html Bellamy, Patrick, "Ivan Milat, the Notorious Australian Backpacker Killer" Crimelibrary.com
  11. ^ http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/bryant/index_1.html Bellamy, Patrick, "The Port Arthur Massacre - A Killer Among Us" Crimelibrary.com
  12. ^ http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/snowtown/index_1.html Boston, John, "Snowtown - A Bank Vault's Deadly Math" Crimelibrary.com
  13. ^ Community devastated by deadly hit-and-run Australian Broadcasting Commission, February 19, 2006
  14. ^ Suspect surrenders to police, The Age, 20 June 2007