Timeline of major crimes in Australia

Timeline of major crimes in Australia

19th century

1800s

• 26 January 1808 - George Johnston played a key role in the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia's recorded history, the Rum Rebellion. Johnston later sailed for England and was found guilty of mutiny.

1820s

• 20 September 1822 - Alexander Pearce, Bob Greenhill and six others escape from Macquarie Harbour. Pearce and Greenhill would kill their fellow escapees and eat them.
• 14 September 1828 - Bank of Australia robbery

1830s

• 9 June 1838 - Myall Creek Massacre

1850s

• 28 November - 3 December 1854 - Eureka Stockade Gold prospecters staged an uprising against government leading to armed conflict; 22 miners and 6 soldiers were killed

1860s

• 30 June 1861 - Lambing Flat riots White miners riot against Chinese immigrants.
• 17 October 1861 - Cullin La Ringo massacre in Central Queensland. Nineteen white settlers killed, one of the largest massacre of whites by Aborigines in Australian history.
• 15 June 1862 - Eugowra gold escort robbery - Frank Gardiner's gang, including Ben Hall (bushranger), steal 2700 ounces of gold worth more than 14,000 pounds.
• 9 April 1865 - Daniel Morgan, a prominent bushranger who had been raiding banks in Victoria and New South Wales for more than a decade, is killed.
• 1867 - Bushrangers Tom and John Clarke captured after two year crime spree in southern NSW.
• 1869 - Bushranger Andrew "Captain Moonlite" Scott robbed the London Chartered Bank in Mount Egerton, Victoria escaping with £1,000.

1870s

• 1877 - ₤5000 worth of gold sovereigns are stolen from the P&O steamer Avoca, en route from Sydney to Melbourne.
• 1878 - Bushranger Ned Kelly raids a bank in Euroa and, at a nearby sheep station, 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.

1880s

• 26 June 1880 - Joe Byrne shot 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 held the town of Glenrowan, Victoria hostage at the town's inn in an attempt to ambush police. The attempt failed and a siege ensued on the 28th, during which three members of the gang and at least one young boy were killed, and Ned Kelly was captured.M
• 11 November 1880 - Ned Kelly hanged at the Melbourne Gaol.
• 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 Gaol on 18 November the same year.

1890s

• 24 December 1891 - The Windsor murder - English gasfitter, confidence trickster and career criminal Frederick Bailey Deeming murdered his new wife Emily (née Mather) at a newly rented house in Andrew Street, Windsor, Melbourne, burying her body under the hearth. He had previously murdered his first wife Marie Deeming and their four children and buried them beneath the floor of a house at Rainhill, England in July or August 1891. Their bodies were not discovered until after the Windsor murder. Deeming was arrested at Southern Cross, Western Australia, and after a trial at Melbourne, he was executed in June 1892. His notoriety in Australia was such that he was widely believed to be Jack the Ripper.
• 15 January 1894 - The baby farming murderess Frances Lydia Alice Knorr is hanged.
• 26 December 1898 - Gatton murders - Three members of the same family are sexually molested and murdered near the town of Gatton, Queensland (unsolved)

20th century

1900s

• 20 July 1900 - Jimmy Governor murders four members of the Mawbey family, and schoolteacher, Helen Josephine Kerz at Breelong NSW. Then with his brother, Joe, murders two old men, Alexander McKay and Kyrien Fitzpatrick, and three members of the O'Brien family, mother and wife Elizabeth, her about to be born child, and her 10 month old son at Poggy near Merriwa in the Upper Hunter district. After being on the run for around 100 days, Joe is shot dead and Jimmy is taken to Sydney for trial where he is found guilty of the murder of Miss Kerz (not of any of his other victims) and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol in January 1901.
• 2 January 1902 - Bertha Schippan is found murdered at Towitta, South Australia, two weeks before of her 14th birthday. After an inquest, her 24 year old sister, Mary stands trial in Adelaide, but is acquitted.
• April 1902 - When the charred remains of Dahlke and Constable George Doyle of the Upper Warrego police station, who had set out during Easter 1902 to arrest the Kenniffs for horse-stealing, were found in Lethbridge's Pocket, strong suspicion fell on Patrick and James Kenniff. Although he did not see the actual murders, Doyle's Aboriginal tracker, Sam Johnson, heard shooting and when he neared the arrest scene the Kenniffs pursued him, but he escaped. Despite a reward of £1000 and a large police manhunt, they were not taken until 23 June at Arrest Creek, south of Mitchell.
• 6 October 1909 - Martha Rendell is hanged in Western Australia for the murder of three of her stepchildren.

1910s

• 16 July 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.
• 16 November 1911 - George David Silva shot and bashed six members of the Ching family near Mackay, Queensland.
• 8 June 1913 - 11-year-old Ivy Mitchell was raped and murdered on her way home from school near Samford, Queensland by Ernest Austin; he was the last person in Queensland to be hanged.
• 1 January 1915 — Two men flying a Turkish flag attacked a picnic train near Broken Hill, in what is known as The Battle of Broken Hill. Both attackers were shot dead by police; four other people were killed and seven wounded.
• 14 February 1916 — Liverpool riot — An initial mutiny/strike by 5000 AIF soldiers from Casula near Liverpool became a three day riot and pub crawl ending at Central and East Sydney, involving commandeered trains, destruction of property, and confrontations with police and military guards. NSW Premier William Holman called a state of emergency and closed Sydney's pubs. About 1000 soldiers were court-martialled and gaoled or discharged from the army. One consequence was the introduction of six o'clock closing, already present in South Australia, following a June 1916 referendum. The NSW "six o'clock swill" saw the rise of sly-grog shops, and lasted until 1955 when the closing time was changed to 10pm following another referendum.
• December 1917 - early 1918 - Wonnangatta murders - in the remote Wonnangatta Valley in East Gippsland, Victoria; the badly decomposed body of Jim Barclay, the manager of Wonnangatta Station, was found near the station homestead on 23 February 1918. He had been shot from behind with a shotgun, and John Bamford, a cook and general hand was assumed to be the culprit. However, Bamford's body was found late in 1918 on the Howitt Plains after a state wide search when the winter snows had melted. He had also been shot from close range. No arrests were ever made, despite the State Government offering a £200 reward.

1920s

• 21 December 1921 - The Gun Alley Murder - 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke was found raped and murdered in Gun Alley, Melbourne. 28-year-old Colin Ross was hanged for the crime, but in 1992 re-assessment stated Ross was probably innocent. After DNA testing cleared Ross he was pardoned posthumously on 27 May 2008.
• May 1926 - Forrest River massacre - Western Australia - 11 people were murdered in a series of punitive raids after the murder of a pastoralist in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
• April 1927 - Newcastle Tragedy - Mary Buckley was slain by her husband at their Newcastle townhouse while she slept 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. The official death toll was 31, but some experts believe it to be much higher.
• 23 February 1929 - Constable John Holeman was shot in Grenfell St, Adelaide by John Stanley McGrath while taking McGrath's motorcycle and sidecar to the City Watchhouse. Holeman died an hour and a half later; McGrath was sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment, and served 15 years.
• December 1929 - May 1930 - The Murchison Murders - Snowy Rowles murdered three men in Outback Western Australia.

1930s

• 1 September 1934 - Pyjama Girl murder - The body of a woman found beaten and half burnt in a culvert near Albury, New South Wales.
• 1932-1934 - Caledon Bay crisis - A series of rapes, murders and retaliatory violence involving Japanese, Aboriginals and white Australians in the Northern Territory.
• 1935 - The Shark Arm Case - The arm of murdered man James Smith is disgorged by a tiger shark being held in a public exhibit in Sydney (unsolved).

1940s

• 3 May-4 November 1942 - Eddie Leonski, an American soldier, murdered three women in Melbourne, Victoria, in the Brownout murders.
• 1 December 1948 - The Taman Shud Case. A middle-aged man is found dead, presumably poisoned, at Somerton Beach near Glenelg, South Australia. His identity and how he died remains a mystery.

1950s

• 19 September 1952 - Betty Shanks was murdered; she was found the following morning in the front yard of a house on the corner of Thomas and Carberry Streets The Grange. This is one of the classic unsolved Queensland cases
• 11 May 1953 - Caroline Grills was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of her sister-in-law Mrs Eveline Lundberg and Lundberg's daughter Mrs Christine Downey, both of Redfern; the attempt had been made with thallium, a poison commonly found in rat bait. The symptoms of thallium poisoning included loss of hair, nervous disorders, progressive blindness, loss of speech and eventual death. Both Downey and Lundberg suffered these symptoms for some time, recovering only when Mrs Grills did not visit.

1960s

• 7 July 1960 - 8-year old Graeme Thorne is kidnapped and murdered days after his parents win the Opera House Lottery.
• 19 July 1960 - The First skyjacking/hijacking in the world occurred on Trans Australia Airlines Flight 408.
• 1964 - The Nedlands Monster - Eric Edgar Cooke murdered eight people and assaulted 20 more during a crime spree in Perth.
• 11 January 1965 - Wanda Beach Murders - Two teenage girls were murdered on a southern Sydney beach (unsolved).
• 19 December 1965 - Pentridge Prison warder George Hodson was shot dead by Ronald Ryan while Ryan and Peter Walker were effecting an escape. Ryan was last man hanged in Australia.
• 26 January 1966 - Beaumont children disappearance - Three young children disappear from Glenelg Beach in Adelaide, South Australia (unsolved).
• 1966 - Keith Ryrie murdered 18-year-old Maureen Ferrari and five-year-old Rhonda Irwin.
• 8 May 1969 - 15-year-old Alfred James Jessop strangled eight-year-old Vicki Barton after she refused to have sex with him at a vacant block in Lawson, NSW. He then used his bicycle trailer to carry her body to bushland where he buried her; he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1978 and was paroled in 2003.

1970s

• 1 July 1970 - Elmer Crawford electrocuted and bashed his pregnant wife, three children and unborn child to death at their home in Cardinal Rd, Glenroy, before putting the bodies in his car and pushing the car over a cliff at Loch Ard Gorge. He remains on the run as of December 2011.
• 6 September 1971- Clifford Cecil Bartholomew shot dead his wife Heather, their seven children, his sister-in-law and his nephew with a .22-caliber rifle at their dairy farm in Hope Forest, South Australia.
• 6 October 1972 - Faraday School kidnapping - a teacher and her six female pupils were kidnapped for $1 million ransom in rural Victoria by unemployed friends Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland.
• 15 November 1972 - Ansett Airlines Flight 232 - aircraft hijacking in Australia. Ansett Airlines flight 232 from Adelaide to Alice Springs with 28 passengers and a crew of 4, followed by a gun battle at Alice Springs Airport where the hijacker, Miloslav Hrabinec, shot himself. He died later that day.
• 8 March 1973 - Whiskey Au Go Go fire: 15 people were killed in an arson attack on a Brisbane nightclub.
• 1974 - Barbara McKulkin & her two daughters disappeared in Brisbane and were never seen again, presumed murdered; possible links to the Whiskey A Go Go nightclub bombing (unsolved).
• 4 July 1975 - Juanita Nielsen Disappearance - Kings Cross newspaper publisher Juanita Nielsen disappears after running a campaign against local development and investigating links between developers and criminal activity (unsolved).
• 25 December 1975 - Savoy Hotel Fire: Reginald John Lyttle set fire to newspapers in a hotel in Kings Cross. 14 died from carbon monoxide poisoning and one from burns in the fire.
• 21 April 1976 - Great Bookie Robbery - A gang of six men stole an undetermined sum (between $6 and $12 million) from the Victoria Club in Queen Street, Melbourne. One man, Norman Lee, is charged along with two others but all three were acquitted (technically unsolved).
• 16 December 1976 - Faraday kidnapper Edwin Eastwood escaped from Geelong Prison after stealing a car; on 15 February 1977, he kidnapped a teacher and nine pupils from the Wooreen State School in Gippsland, Victoria, before taking another six hostages in 20 minutes. He demanded a ransom of US$7 million, guns, 100 kilograms of heroin and cocaine, and the release of seventeen inmates from Pentridge Prison; However, one of the hostages escaped and notified police, Eastwood fled with the remaining hostages, and after the campervan was disabled by police gunfire at Woodside, Eastwood was shot below the right knee and re-captured by police.
• 15 July 1977 - Donald Mackay disappearance - Anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay from Griffith, New South Wales disappeared, presumed murdered. James Frederick Bazley was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment plus 12 years without the possibility of parole in 1986 for the murder of Mackay, the murders of Crown witnesses Douglas and Isabel Wilson on 13 April 1979, and the armed robbery of $260,000 from a security van in 1978; he died of cancer on 8 November 2001.
• 13 February 1978 - Sydney Hilton bombing - Three men killed by a bomb blast outside Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting in Sydney. Ananda Marga members were imprisoned but later pardoned and released
• 22 April 1978 - discovery of the Truro murders.
• 11 August 1978 - John Ernest Cribb raped Valda Connell before stabbing her and two of her children, Sally and Damien Connell, at Swansea, NSW.
• 22 November 1978 - The Magnetic drill gang stole $1.7 million from a Murwillumbah bank.
• 1978-1979 - Paul Steven Haigh murders six victims to cover up his robberies.

1980s

• 26 April 1980 - Louise and Charmian Faulkner disappearance - A mother and her two and a half year old daughter disappeared from outside their St Kilda, Victoria residence and are presumed murdered (unsolved).
• 23 June 1980 - Family Court judge Justice David Opas was shot dead at his home by an unknown gunman.
• 23 June 1983 - Martin Leach bound, gagged and stabbed Charmaine Ariet and bound, gagged, stabbed, raped and slit the throat of her cousin Janice Carnegie before burying their bodies in a gully at Berry Springs.
• 18 August 1983 - Douglas Crabbe rammed his 25 ton Mack truck into a motel bar at the base of Uluru, Northern Territory, killing 5 people and injuring 16.
• 31 January 1984 - Sydney's 1984 'Dog Day Afternoon' - 35 year old Hakki Bahadir Atahan went on a bank robbery spree, taking 11 people hostage, and holding police at bay for several hours before being shot dead by a police sniper on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
• 14 August 1984 - Fine Cotton Affair - A syndicate of trainers and bookmakers substituted one horse for another at a Brisbane horse race.
• 2 September 1984 - Milperra massacre - Two rival bikie gangs staged a shoot-out in a car park of a south-western Sydney hotel. 7 people were shot dead and 15 others injured.
• 9 May 1985 - Christopher Flannery disappearance - Known as "Mr-Rent-A-Kill", Melbourne hitman Christopher Dale Flannery disappears without trace, presumed murdered (unsolved).
• 2 February 1986 - Anita Cobby murder - Sydney nurse Anita Cobby was abducted, robbed, raped, brutalized and murdered by career criminals John Travers, Michael Murdoch and brothers Michael, Gary and Leslie Murphy.
• 6 February 1986 - Sallie-Anne Huckstepp murder - Sydney prostitute and police informant Sallie-Anne Huckstepp is found strangled and shot in Centennial Park. Convicted murderer Arthur "Neddy" Smith is charged with ordering the killing but was acquitted (unsolved).
• 27 March 1986 - Russell Street bombing - Four men planted a car bomb outside Police Headquarters in Russell Street, Melbourne; a 22-year old policewoman was killed in the explosion and 22 others injured.
• 19 August 1986 - Samantha Knight disappearance - 9-year-old Samantha Knight disappeared from a Bondi street; it was eventually found that she had overdosed on sedatives given to her by convicted pedophile Michael Guider.
• 6 October 1986 - Mary Nielson, first victim of David and Catherine Birnie, is killed. The Birnies murdered three more women before being captured.
• 9 August 1987 - Hoddle Street massacre - 19-year-old Julian Knight killed 7 people and injured 19 at random in Hoddle Street, Melbourne before surrendering to police.
• 27 November 1987 - 12-year-old Sian Kingi was abducted, raped, tortured, stabbed and strangled in Noosa, Queensland by married couple Barrie Watts and Valmae Beck.
• 8 December 1987 - Queen Street massacre - Frank Vitkovic shot dead 8 people and seriously injured 5 others in the Australia Post building in Queen Street, Melbourne before leaping to his death from an 11th floor window.
• 8 September 1988 - Janine Balding murder - 21 year old Janine Balding was abducted, robbed, raped and murdered by five homeless youths in Sydney's west. Stephen "Shorty" Jamieson, 16-year-old Matthew Elliott, and 14-year-old Bronson Blessington were convicted of Balding's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 25 years without the possibility of parole.
• 12 October 1988 - Walsh Street police shootings - Two police officers were executed in Melbourne (unsolved).
• 10 January 1989 - Colin Winchester murder - The Assistant Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police was shot dead outside his home in Canberra by a sniper, later identified as former public servant David Harold Eastman.
• November 1989 - Leigh Leigh murder - Newcastle teenager Leigh Leigh was raped and murdered on a Newcastle beach at a party.
• 1989-1990 - Granny Murders - John Wayne Glover murdered six elderly women across Sydney's north shore.

1990s

Port Arthur Prison Colony, site of the Port Arthur massacre

• 30 August 1990 - Paul Anthony Evers killed 5 people and injured 11 with a 12-gauge shotgun at a public housing precinct before surrendering to police.
• 10 October 1990 - Fiona Burns and John Lee were found stabbed to death at a truck parking bay near Kaniva. (unsolved)
• 13 April 1991 - Karmein Chan (unsolved)
• 25 May 1991 - 21-year-old English backpacker Fiona Carty was sexually assaulted and throttled to death by car thief and con-artist David Troy Masters.
• 4 July 1991 - World famous heart surgeon Victor Chang was murdered in Sydney during an extortion attempt.
• 29 July 1991 - Six-year-old Sheree Beasley was kidnapped and murdered by serial flasher and sex offender Robert Lowe at Rosebud.
• 17 August 1991 - Strathfield massacre - Wade Frankum shot seven people dead before killing himself in a Sydney shopping centre.
• 27 July 1992 - Brian Corrigan shot dead his pregnant wife Kim and their unborn daughter at their Kiama home.
• 16 August 1992 - 18-year-old Clinton Trezise was bashed to death with a hammer by John Justin Bunting at Bunting's Salisbury North home in the first of the eleven Snowtown murders; Trezise's remains were found in a shallow grave on a farm in Lower Light exactly two years later, but he is not identified until 1999 (see below).
• 19 August 1992 - Andrew Garforth kidnapped, raped and drowned nine-year-old schoolgirl Ebony Simpson at Bargo, New South Wales.
• 1988–1992 - The Backpacker murders - Ivan Milat murdered seven tourists and buried their bodies in Belanglo State Forest.
• 17 January 1993 Jason Paul Clarke murdered in Woonona NSW. Geoffrey Colin Moore sentenced to 17 years prison, 10 years non parole.
• 7 February 1993 - Greenough Family Massacre - Karen McKenzie and her three children were murdered at their remote rural property in Western Australia by former farmhand William Patrick Mitchell.
• 30 March 1993 - Cangai siege - Murderers Leonard Leabeater, Robert Steele and Raymond Bassett held hostages in a siege at Cangai, near Grafton, threatening to kill people indiscriminately. Leabeater killed himself the following day, while Steele and Bassett surrendered to police. Steele was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences plus 12 years without parole, while Bassett was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences with a non-parole period of 34 years; Steele hanged himself in prison on 23 December 1994.
• June and July 1993 - The Frankston serial killer, Paul Denyer, murdered three women before being captured.
• 5 August 1993 - Gunn-Britt Ashfield and Austin Allan Hughes bashed Ashfield's 6 year-old son John to death in their Nowra home.
• 29 November 1993 - Edwin Street suffocated his wife Dawn in their Annandale home before dumping her body at a creek near Wollstonecraft; three months later, Street stabbed his girlfriend Linda Whitton, whose body was found inside a suitcase at Whitton's home in Enmore on 23 February 1994 when the home was searched by police. Street was convicted of both murders, sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole, and died of bowel cancer on 20 March 2007.
• 29 November 1993 - Jolimont Centre siege - Felipe Ruizdiaz shot and wounded Geoff McGibbon, before crashing his vehicle rigged with petrol and gas canisters through the front glass walls of the Jolimont Centre in Canberra.
• 2 March 1994 - NCA Bombing - A parcel bomb explodes at the Adelaide office of the National Crime Authority, killing Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Bowen and injuring lawyer Peter Wallis. Dominic Perre was detained but released due to lack of evidence (unsolved).
• 8 May 1994 - Fiona Harvey was found beaten to death on the stairs of a motel in Kings Cross.
• 22 August 1994 - Kyle and Latisha O'Neill were shot dead as they slept by their father, Norm, in a double murder-suicide in Stirling, Western Australia.
• 5 September 1994 - Sydney politician John Newman was assassinated outside his home on the orders of political rival Phoung Ngo.
• 29 October 1995 - 10-year-old Leanne Oliver and nine-year-old Patricia Leedie were raped and beaten to death by local handyman and mechanic and convicted sex offender Paul Stephen Osbourne at Warana Beach, Queensland.
• 28 April 1996 - Port Arthur massacre - Martin Bryant killed 35 at Port Arthur, Tasmania and injured 21 others in a shooting spree.
• 7 September 1996 - British tourist Brian Hagland was murdered by Aaron Martin at Bondi Beach.
• 10 October 1996 - Tjandamurra O'Shane was set alight in a school playground in Cairns, Queensland by unemployed drifter Paul Wade Streeton.
• 18 May 1997 - champion waterskier Jason Burton was stabbed to death while trying to break up a fight at the General Bourke Hotel in Parramatta, NSW, by Emad Sleiman.
• 15 June 1997 - Jaidyn Leskie was murdered and found dumped in a dam near Moe, Victoria (unsolved).
• 6 October 1997 - Bega schoolgirl murders - 14-year-old Lauren Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Collins were kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered by New Zealand-born career criminal Lindsay Beckett and Victorian prison escapee Leslie Camilleri.
• 16 January 1998 to 15 June 2009 - Melbourne gangland killings - A series of 35 murders of crime figures and their associates that began with the slaying of Alphonse Gangitano in his home, most likely by Jason Moran, the latest victim being Des Moran who was murdered in Ascot Vale on 15 June 2009.
• 12 June 1998 and 19 June 1998 - Mark Valera tortured and murdered Albion Park shopkeeper David O'Hearn and former Wollongong Lord Mayor Frank Arkell. Mark's sister Belinda van Krevel later 'asked' boyfriend Keith Schreiber to murder her father Jack van Krevel in retaliation for alleged sexual assault claims.
• 16 August 1998 - Victorian police officers Gary Silk and Rodney Miller were shot dead in an ambush by Bendali Debs and Jason Joseph Roberts in the Moorabbin Police murders.
• 3 February 1999 - Phillip John McCormack was bashed to death in the driveway of his home in the southern suburbs of Adelaide by Brett Stuart Williams and Lawrence Hersbach; police found McCormack's body in a grave at Owen on 27 May 1999. All three were small-time criminals involved in the drug trade.
• 20 May 1999 - The Snowtown murders were uncovered when the remains of eight bodies were found in six acid-filled barrels in a disused bank vault in Snowtown, South Australia, and the remains of two more bodies were later discovered under a brick rainwater tank stand at a Salisbury North property, bringing the total number of victims to eleven.

21st century

2000s

• 29 February 2000 - Katherine Knight stabbed, skinned, partially cooked and cannibalized her de facto husband John Price in Aberdeen, New South Wales.
• 13 March 2000 - Millewa State Forest Murders - Barbara and Stephen Brooks and Stacie Willoughby were found dead, all three having been shot execution style and left in the forest.
• 28 May 2000 - Keith William Allan was murdered in a contract killing in Melbourne.
• Winter 2000 - Sydney gang rapes - A series of ethnically motivated gang rapes swept Sydney's west.
• 23 June 2000 - Childers Palace Fire - Robert Paul Long set fire to a backpacker's hostel in Childers, Queensland; 15 people were killed.
• 15 September 2000 - The activities of serial pedophile Geoffrey Robert Dobbs were exposed after he brought a VCR with a jammed cassette into a Melbourne electronics store for repair; police later determined that Dobbs molested at least 63 girls, including five family members, aged between one month and 15 years in Queensland between 1972 and 2000 while acting as a teacher and youth leader. Dobbs was sentenced in July 2003 to two consecutive terms of indefinite imprisonment with a nominal sentence of 30 years.
• 10 July 2001 - Sef Gonzales bashed, stabbed and strangled his sister Clodine, mother Mary and father Teddy within two and a half hours in their North Ryde home in Sydney, NSW.
• 12 July 2001 - Carolyn Matthews was repeatedly stabbed on the front lawn of her West Lakes home by David William Key on the orders of her husband, Kevin, and his lover, Michelle Burgess, in order to maintain their affair.
• 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 drugged and bashed his mother Margaret Wales-King and stepfather Paul King to death before burying them in a shallow grave at Marysville, Victoria.
• 14 October 2002 - Dr. Margret Tobin, the South Australian head of Mental Health Services, was shot dead by Jean Eric Gassy as she walked out of a lift in her office building.
• 21 October 2002 - Monash University shooting - Huan Xiang opened fire in a tutorial room, killing two and injuring five.
• April 2003 - Pong Su incident: A North Korean freighter was boarded after four-day chase and taken into custody in connection with a worldwide heroin smuggling operation.
• 30 November 2003 - Cyclist Ian Humphery was stuck and killed by Eugene McGee along the Kapunda Road, South Australia. Due to the controversy over McGee's later conviction and the public protests it ignited, the South Australian Government ordered a Royal Commission into the incident and the trail.
• 7 December 2003 - Daniel Morcombe is abducted from under an overpass on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland while waiting for a bus.
• 31 December 2003 - convicted pedophile Jeffrey John Hillsley bashed former coworker Michael Davies to death with a hammer at Campsie, NSW and kidnapped and raped his 10-year-old stepdaughter before being captured by special operations police after a 14 hour siege.
• 14 February 2004 - 2004 Redfern riots - Aboriginal youths rioted against police in response to the death of 17-year old TJ Hickey, who accidentally impaled himself on a fence while fleeing police he mistakenly believed to be pursuing him.
• March 2004 - Darwin sex workers Phuangsri Kroksamrang and Somjai Insamnan were bound with cable ties and thrown alive into the Adelaide River by Ben William McLean and Phu Ngoc Trinh.
• 23 March 2004 - John Sharpe murdered his pregnant wife, two-year-old daughter and unborn son with a speargun at Mornington, Victoria.
• 26 July 2004 - Security guard Karen Brown shot dead armed robber William Aquilina in a Sydney carpark after he violently bashed her and stole the hotel's takings. Brown was charged with murder but acquitted on the grounds of self defence.
• 11 February 2005 - Melbourne woman Maria Korp was found in a coma in the boot of her car. Her husband Joe and his lover, Tania Herman, were subsequently charged with her murder after Mrs Korp's life-support was switched off. Joe Korp subsequently hanged himself in the garage of his home.
• 26 February - 1 March 2005 - Macquarie Fields riots - residents of the south western Sydney suburb rioted in response to the deaths of two youths, who were passengers in a stolen car being driven by a known criminal, during a police pursuit. Residents believed police were unfairly persecuting local youths.
• 1 June 2005 - Indonesian embassy bioterrorism hoax
• 5 November 2005 - Sydney teenager Lauren Huxley was severely bashed and doused with petrol in her home by Robert Black Farmer.
• December 2005 - 2005 Cronulla riots - rioting by European Australians and Arab Australians directed against each other were 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.
• 18 February 2006 - Cardross Hit and Run - Thomas Graham Towle crashed his car at high speed into a group of 13 teenagers killing six and injuring seven near the town of Cardross, Victoria.
• 20 February 2006 - Errol Graham Hayes set fire to a house at Annerley, Queensland after an argument; his former girlfriend, Theresa Marchetti, her new partner, Mark Christensen, and his own 18-month-old son, Joshua Hayes, were killed in the fire.
• 26 June 2006 - Canning Vale murder - 8-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu was raped and murdered in a suburban Perth shopping mall by Dante Wyndham Arthurs.
• 5 June 2007 - Tony Mokbel arrested - Convicted drug trafficker Tony Mokbel was arrested in Athens, Greece after fleeing Australia in March 2006 during his trial for the importation of cocaine.
• 18 June 2007 - Melbourne CBD shooting - Christopher Wayne Hudson opened fire on three people, killing one and seriously wounding two others who intervened when Hudson was assaulting his girlfriend at a busy Melbourne intersection during the morning peak. He gave himself up to police in Wallan, Victoria on 20 June.
• 3 December 2008 - 83-year-old pensioner Vonne McGlynn was murdered and dismembered by Angelika Gavare at her home in Reynella, South Australia as part of Gavare's plan to steal McGlynn's identity to take her house and money; McGlynn's remains were found at Christie's Creek on 23 February 2009.
• 7 February 2009 - 2009 Victorian bushfires - Arsonists lit several fires contributing to the deaths of 173 people.
• 2 June 2009 - Violence against Indians stirs up international controversy.
• 18 July 2009 - Five members of the Lin family were found dead in their home in Epping, New South Wales.

2010s

• 27 April 2010 - Former US Marine Walter Marsh ambushed his boss, Michelle Beets, before slitting her throat and stabbing her eight times in the chest outside her Chatswood home.
• 1 May 2010 - Brett Nicholas Richard Kuzimski stabbed and strangled Melanie Carle and Kellie Maree Guyler before placing their bodies into a Toyota Land Cruiser and torching it off the Tonkin Highway at Wattle Grove, Western Australia.
• 1 June 2010 - David Warwick Hopkins stabbed Nicole Miller in the neck and set her alight at a petrol station in Bayswater, Victoria; Miller died of her injuries in hospital.
• 8 November 2010 - Jason Alexander Downie repeatedly stabbed Andrew, Rose and Chantelle Rowe in a frenzied attack at their home in Kapunda, South Australia.
• 28 April 2011 - 2011 Hectorville siege - Donato Anthony Corbo shot dead Kobus and Annetjie Snyman and their son-in-law Luc Mombers and seriously wounded Mr Mombers' 14-year-old son Marcel and a police officer at Hectorville, South Australia before being arrested after an eight hour stand off.
• 10 August 2011 - convicted drug dealer Peter Dent is stabbed multiple times by two men in his Hamilton South, New South Wales home. Dent died four days later in hospital from his injuries.
• 29 January 2012 - Giovanni Focarelli, son of Comancheros gang member Vincenzo Focarelli, was shot dead whilst Vincenzo survived the fourth attempt on his life.

See also

• Crime in Australia
• List of Australian criminals
• List of disasters in Australia by death toll
• For information and debate pertaining to the massacre and genocide of Aborigines, see Indigenous Australians, Black War and History Wars

References

• Whiticker, Alan J (2005). Twelve Crimes That Shocked the Nation. ISBN 1-74110-110-7.