Neha Patil (Editor)

Timeline of major crimes in Australia

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit

This is a timeline of major crimes in Australia

Contents

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 escaped from Macquarie Harbour. Pearce and Greenhill later killed their fellow escapees and ate them.
  • 1820s – Thomas Jeffries, bushranger, serial killer and cannibal in the early 19th century in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia), killed four male adults and a five-month-old baby during the 1820s. He was executed by hanging on 4 May 1826.
  • 10 February 1828 – Cape Grim massacre – Four shepherds with muskets ambushed over 30 Tasmanian Aboriginal people from the Pennemukeer band from Cape Grim, killing 30 and throwing their bodies over a 60-metre cliff into the sea.
  • 14 September 1828 – Bank of Australia robbery

    • 1830s

  • 10 June 1838 – Myall Creek Massacre – up to 30 Aboriginal people were slaughtered at the Myall Creek near Bingara in northern New South Wales. After two trials, seven of the 11 colonists involved in the killings were found guilty of murder and hanged

    • 1840s

  • June–July 1840 – Maria shipwreck massacre – 25 survivors of the Maria shipwreck are massacred along the Coorong under mysterious circumstances while being assisted back to Adelaide by members of the Ngarrindjeri. Governor George Gawler ordered a hasty investigation and the execution of those responsible. A drumhead court-martial led to the execution of two Ngarrindjeri men.

    • 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 rioted against Chinese immigrants.
  • 17 October 1861 – Cullin La Ringo massacre in Central Queensland. Nineteen white settlers were killed, one of the largest massacres of whites by Aborigines in Australian history.
  • 15 June 1862 – Eugowra gold escort robbery – Frank Gardiner's gang, including Ben Hall, stole 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, was killed.
  • 1867 – Bushrangers Tom and John Clarke captured after a two-year crime spree in southern NSW.
  • February–May 1868 – Flying Foam Massacre – confrontations between white settlers and Aboriginal people around Flying Foam Passage on Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula) resulted in the deaths of between 20–150 people
  • 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 were stolen from the P&O steamer Avoca, en route from Sydney to Melbourne.
  • 1878 – Bushranger Ned Kelly raided a bank in Euroa and, at a nearby sheep station, hosted a party for his 22 hostages shortly afterwards.
  • October 1878 – Stringybark Creek Massacre – Victorian bushrangers, the Kelly Gang, ambushed and killed 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 Kelly's gang and a young boy were killed, and Ned Kelly was captured after being wounded 28 times by police.
  • 24 July 1880 - John James MacGregor Greer shot his wife, Annice and M. A. Louis Soudry, then shot himself at the Melbourne Opera House. J.J.M. Greer died, the others recovered.
  • 11 November 1880 – Ned Kelly was 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 murderer Frances Lydia Alice Knorr was hanged.
  • 11 October 1896 – Joseph Thyer, a sheep farmer, murdered his wife and five children before hanging himself in Cavanagh, SA
  • 1 March 1898 – Glover family tragedy – A mother murdered her six children and then committed suicide in the town of Triabunna, Tasmania
  • 26 December 1898 – Gatton murders – Three members of the same family were murdered, the sisters being sexually assaulted, near the town of Gatton, Queensland (unsolved)

    • 1900s

  • 20 July 1900 – Jimmy Governor murdered four members of the Mawbey family, and schoolteacher Helen Josephine Kerz, at Breelong, NSW. Then with his brother Joe, he murdered two old men, Alexander McKay and Kyrien Fitzpatrick, and three members of the O'Brien family, mother and wife Elizabeth, her 10-month-old son at Poggy, and unborn child, near Merriwa in the Upper Hunter district. After being on the run for around 100 days, Joe was shot dead and Jimmy was taken to Sydney for trial, where he was 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 was found murdered at Towitta, South Australia, two weeks before her 14th birthday. After an inquest, her 24-year-old sister Mary stood trial in Adelaide, but was 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 James and Patrick Kenniff for horse-stealing, were found in Lethbridge's Pocket, strong suspicion fell on the Kenniffs. 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 was hanged in Western Australia for the murder of three of her stepchildren.

    • 1910s

  • 16 July 1911 — Scott Street Tragedy – Timothy Daly, 26, was gunned down on a street in Newcastle, New South Wales.
  • 16 November 1911 – George David Silva shot and bashed dead 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 10 pm 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 statewide 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

  • On or around 21 February 1921 – Murder of Chrissie Venn – a 13-year-old girl who was found murdered outside the village of North Motton, near Ulverstone, Tasmania.
  • 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 a 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.
  • 17 December 1926 – Adelaide: fired postal worker James Hannivan shot and wounded two employees at the Adelaide General Post Office, before committing suicide by shooting himself in the head.
  • 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.
  • 27 October 1927– Squizzy Taylor died after a shootout with rival gangster Snowy Cutmore in Melbourne.
  • August 1928 – Coniston massacre – Northern Territory police constable William Murray led 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.
  • 26 February 1929 – Father Andrew Thomas Edgar Archur murdered his five children and his wife and then set fire to their house in Devonport, Tasmania. He killed himself after the attack.
  • December 1929 – May 1930 – The Murchison Murders – Snowy Rowles murdered three men in Outback Western Australia.

    • 1930s

  • 21 August 1931 – Roderick A. Davies, a 36-year-old carpenter, shot dead his wife and five children before taking his own life in Perth
  • 1 September 1934 – Pyjama Girl murder – The body of a woman was 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 was 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, in the Brownout murders. He was executed on 9 November 1942.
  • 2 July 1948 – Frederick Charles Hall, a 48-year-old labourer shot dead his six children near Glen Innes, New South Wales. He was later sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.
  • 1 December 1948 – The Tamam Shud case. A middle-aged man was found dead, presumably poisoned, at Somerton Beach near Glenelg, South Australia. His identity and cause of death remain a mystery.

    • 1950s

  • 12 October 1950 – 40-year-old father Raymond Armanasco killed his wife and five of his children in Collie near Perth. Armanasco was later sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.
  • 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 in 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 Eveline Lundberg and Lundberg's daughter 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 Grills did not visit.
  • In 1954, at the age of 26, Leonard Keith Lawson took five June Dally-Watkins photographic models into the Terrey Hills bush in north Sydney and, at gunpoint, raped two and sexually assaulted the others. He was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to 14 years' jail and he was released after serving only half the term. On November 7, 1962, while painting a portrait of 16-year-old Manly girl, Jane Bower, in his flat at Collaroy, Lawson bound her arms, sexually assaulted her and stabbed her to death. The next day, he burst into the chapel of the Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School at Moss Vale, taking schoolgirls hostage. In the siege, a struggle ensued and his gun discharged, killing 15-year-old Wendy Sue Luscombe, who was sitting in the pews. Lawson was sentenced to life imprisonment. On December 15, 1972, a group of dancers arrived at Parramatta jail to give a concert for the inmates. Lawson, on privileges, was in the audience. At the end of the performance, he whipped out a knife and jumped to the stage, holding the blade to the throat of dancer Sharon Hamilton in what prison warders believe was an escape attempt.
  • 18 February 1957 – Marian Majka killed his wife Gisella and their five-year-old daughter Shirley with a knife and hammer at Cannon Hill, Queensland. He then waited until neighbour Neil Irvine had gone to work, set fire to his house, then took a .30 calibre semi-automatic rifle across the road and shot and killed Irvine's wife Belinda, 12-year-old daughter Annie, 9-year-old daughter Belinda, and 10-year-old Lynette Karger, who regularly stopped in at the Irvine house to walk to the nearby Cannon Hill Primary school with the Irvine children, and wounded youngest daughter Elaine, 6 months old. He set the bodies on fire, shot the Irvine's dog and opened fire on firefighters, passers-by and passing cars, barely missing another child. When Sergeant Jack Strickfuss, who knew and was a neighbour of Majka, approached the house, Majka killed himself. Strickfuss was awarded the George Medal. Neighbours James Ainsworth and Frederick Ganter who assisted him on the day were awarded Queen's Commendation for Bravery.
  • 29 July 1957 – At Bega, New South Wales, Senior Constable Kenneth Desmond Coussens (31), his wife Elizabeth (34) and 7-month old son Bruce were killed instantly by a bomb placed on their home's veranda. The house was demolished by the explosion at about 2 AM. 8 year-old Roger McCampbell, Coussens' step-son, survived. A six-gallon metal cream container filled with 240 sticks of gelignite, stolen from a mine, was placed there by Myron Bertram Kelly. Coussens dealt with Kelly regarding traffic offences and issued him several traffic fines. Kelly appears to have become angered because Coussens issued further fines and defect notices regarding Kelly’s tractor and rotary hoe. On 6 December 1957 Justice McClemens sentenced Kelly to life imprisonment for the 3 murders.
  • December 1957 – Sundown Murders: Sally (Thyra) Bowman, her 14-year-old daughter Wendy Bowman and family friend Thomas Whelan were shot and bashed to death at Sundown Station in northern South Australia outback by Raymond John Bailey. Bailey had his wife and young son with him, and had told another traveller on the Alice Springs road that he was heading north looking for work. Bailey was subsequently arrested in Mount Isa, Queensland on 21 January 1958, extradited to South Australia, convicted of the killings and hanged at Adelaide Gaol on 24 June 1958.

    • 1960s

  • 7 July 1960 – 8-year-old Graeme Thorne was kidnapped and murdered days after his parents won the Opera House Lottery.
  • 19 July 1960 – The First skyjacking/hijacking in the world occurred on Trans Australia Airlines Flight 408.
  • 5–6 May 1964 – An entire family was found gassed to death in their Warwick home. Among the dead were Herbert Darnley, his wife Joyce, and their five children, the youngest being only 3 years old. Prior to entering the gas-filled house, a friend of Darnley found a note on the door of the scene.
  • 1964 – The Nedlands Monster – Eric Edgar Cooke murdered eight people and assaulted 20 more during a crime spree in Perth.
  • 24 November 1964 – Glen Sabre Valance was the last person hanged in South Australia for the murder of Richard Strang at Bordertown.
  • 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 the last man to be hanged in Australia.
  • 26 January 1966 – Beaumont children disappearance – Three young children disappeared 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 bludgeoned 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 remained 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.
  • 25 August 1973 - Disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon - a schoolgirl and a pre-schooler vanish without a trace from the Adelaide Oval while attending an Australian rules football match. Police believe that they were abducted, raped and murdered.
  • 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).
  • 22 September 1976 – William Robert Wilson shot dead 17-year-old Monika Schleus and 18-year-old Marianne Kalatzis and wounded Donald William Hepburn Galloway, Mavis Ethel Sanders, Virginia Hollidge and Quinto Alberti on Boundary Street, Spring Hill, Brisbane. After arming himself with a .22 calibre rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition he arrived at Boundary Street around 12.30 pm and began shooting randomly in a milk bar and a neighbouring shop before being captured by heavily armed police around 4:15 pm at a suburban house where Wilson was holding a man and four young women hostage. Wilson served three years in a mental hospital and after being found fit for trial, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1980 to two consecutive life sentences for the murders and concurrent 10 year sentences for the four attempted murders.
  • 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 were killed by a bomb blast outside the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting in Sydney. Ananda Marga members were imprisoned but later pardoned and released
  • 22 April 1978 – the Truro murders were discovered
  • 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 armed robberies; he later hanged a cellmate at Pentridge Prison in 1991.

    • 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.
  • 24 September 1981 – Campsie murders – Fouad Daoud killed his wife, four of his children, and then himself in Campsie, New South Wales.
  • 22 June 1982 – Perth Mint Swindle – 49 gold bars valued at up to A$653,000 (at the time) were stolen from the Perth Mint in Western Australia. Three brothers, Ray, Peter and Brian Mickelberg, were found guilty of the conspiracy and sentenced in 1983 to twenty, sixteen and twelve years imprisonment respectively; all three were later exonerated.
  • 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.
  • 6 October 1983 – Mother-of-two Edwina Boyle disappeared from her Dandenong home; it was determined that her husband, Frederick Boyle, had shot her in the back of the head with a .22 calibre rifle to engage in an affair with a neighbour, and had concealed her remains in a barrel until they were found in 2006.
  • 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 Detective Senior Constable Steve Canelis on the Spit Bridge.
  • 15 April 1984 - bombing of the Parramatta Family law court building; followed by bombings at the homes of two judges in Sydney later in the year. The bomb detonated at the law court building did not injure or kill anyone, however, one of the home bombings killed a judge's wife and the other injured Justice Richard Gee at his home. The incidents are largely considered unsolved
  • 1 June 1984 – Wahroonga murders – A Wahroonga man, John Brandon, murdered his three children, his wife and his mother before killing himself.
  • 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 the car park of a south-western Sydney hotel. 7 people were shot dead and 28 others injured.
  • 6 November 1984 – Murder of Kylie Maybury – six-year-old Melbourne schoolgirl Kylie Maybury was kidnapped, raped and murdered after being sent on an errand to buy a bag of sugar (unsolved)
  • 9 May 1985 – Christopher Flannery disappearance – Known as "Mr-Rent-A-Kill", Melbourne hitman Christopher Dale Flannery disappeared without trace, presumed murdered (unsolved.)
  • 2 February 1986 – Anita Cobby murder – Sydney nurse Anita Cobby was abducted, robbed, raped, brutalised 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 was found strangled and shot in Centennial Park. Convicted murderer Arthur "Neddy" Smith was 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.
  • 8 May 1986 – Sharron Phillips' disappearance – 20-year-old Sharron Phillips went missing after her car ran out of petrol on Ipswich Road at Wacol, Queensland (unsolved.)
  • 19 August 1986 – Samantha Knight disappearance – 9-year-old Samantha Knight disappeared from a Bondi street; it was claimed by her kidnapper, convicted paedophile Michael Guider, that he had accidentally overdosed her on sedatives. He received 17 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 12 years for manslaughter, to be served cumulatively with sentences for child sex offences. Knight's remains have not been found.
  • 6 October 1986 – Mary Nielson, first victim of David and Catherine Birnie, was killed. The Birnies murdered three more women before being captured, and are suspected of killing up to eight women.
  • 23 January 1987 – Richard Maddrell shot dead four teenage women with his shotgun in the Sydney suburb of Pymble.
  • 15 July 1987 – 21-year-old Rodney Thomas Clarke raped nine-year-old Deborah Keegan 3 times before suffocating her in her home in western Sydney, which she shared with her three sisters and mother.
  • 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.
  • 19 June 1987 – Top End Kimberly shootings – German tourist Joseph Schwab shot dead 5 people in the Top End before being shot dead by police.
  • 10 October 1987 – Canley Vale shootings – John Tran shot dead 5 people in Canley Vale, New South Wales before killing himself.
  • 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.
  • 7 September 1988 – 17-year-old Sandra Peresan and her 18-year-old boyfriend Shane Bentley were abducted by Van Hung Tran. While Bentley was left uninjured, Peresan was raped and stabbed to death.
  • 8 September 1988 – Murder of Janine Balding – 21-year-old 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.
  • 25 September 1988 – Dennis Rostron shot dead his wife Cecily, his sons two-year-old Preston and one-year-old Zarack, and his in-laws Dick and Dolly Murrumurru at a remote Arnhem Land outstation in Oenpelli, Northern Territory.
  • 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.
  • October 1989 – Sylvia Jill Cave disappeared while on holidays in Melbourne. In June 1993, her body was discovered at a property in Mount Eliza; her American boyfriend Michael Jeffrey Rice was sentenced to ten years imprisonment with a non-parole period of six years for manslaughter.
  • November 1989 – Leigh Leigh murder – Newcastle teenager Leigh Leigh was raped and murdered at a party on a Newcastle beach.
  • 20 October 1989 - Tracey Wigginton lured and killed Edward Baldock supposedly to drink his blood leaving him deceased and almost decapitated. This was described as "one of the most brutal and bizarre crimes Australia has ever seen".
  • 1989 –1990 – North Shore Granny Murders – John Wayne Glover murdered six elderly women across Sydney's North Shore.

    • 1990s

  • 30 August 1990 – Surry Hills massacre – Paul Anthony Evers killed 5 people and injured 7 with a 12 gauge pump-action shotgun at a public housing precinct in Surry Hills, New South Wales before surrendering to police.
  • 23 September 1991 - Leanne Holland, 12 disappeared from her Goodna home and is found murdered in bushland 3 days later
  • 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 was kidnapped and murdered (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.
  • 29 June 1991 – Six-year-old Sheree Beasley was kidnapped and raped and murdered by serial flasher and sex offender Robert Lowe at Rosebud.
  • 4 July 1991 – World-famous heart surgeon Victor Chang was murdered in Sydney during an extortion attempt.
  • 17 August 1991 – Strathfield massacre – Wade Frankum shot six people dead and stabbed to death another 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.
  • 29 July 1992 – Burwood triple murder – Ashley Coulston tied up Peter Dempsey, Kerryn Henstridge and Anne Smerdon with hand cuffs and thumb cuffs and murdered them by shooting them in the back of their heads with a sawn off .22 calibre semi automatic rifle fitted with a home made silencer in a house in the suburb of Burwood, Victoria.
  • 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 twelve Snowtown killings. Trezise's remains were found in a shallow grave on a farm in Lower Light exactly two years later, but he was 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 the Belanglo State Forest.
  • 27 October 1992 – Central Coast massacre – Malcolm George Baker went on a spree killing shooting dead six people and injuring one with a 12 gauge pump-action shotgun in Central Coast, New South Wales. He surrendered to police and was later sentenced to six consecutive terms of life imprisonment plus 25 years, without the possibility of parole.
  • 17 January 1993 – Jason Paul Clarke was murdered in Woonona NSW. Geoffrey Colin Moore was later 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.
  • 21 August 1993 – John Lascano shot dead three people at a gunshop at the Melbourne suburb of Springvale before stealing a large quantity of firearms and ammunition and setting the store alight.
  • 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 and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole. Street died of bowel cancer on 20 March 2007.
  • 29 November 1993 – Jolimont Centre siege – Felipe Ruizdiaz shot and wounded Geoff McGibbon at Dickson before crashing his vehicle rigged with petrol and gas canisters through the front glass walls of the Jolimont Centre in Canberra. During a two-hour siege at the Centre, Ruizdiaz shot at police and rescue workers using a 12-gauge shotgun before setting fire to the building and committing suicide. The fire and explosions hampered rescue and police efforts and caused several million dollars worth of damage to the centre.
  • 2 March 1994 – NCA Bombing – A parcel bomb exploded 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 Phuong Ngo.
  • 17 September 1994 – 13 year-old William Mara was killed in a hit and run.
  • 19 October 1994 - 30 year-old Gary Bennett was abducted and murdered by Michael Elsworth.
  • 28 March 1995 – University student Frances Tizzone was murdered by her ex-boyfriend John Serratore.
  • 29 October 1995 – 10-year-old Leanne Oliver and nine-year-old Patricia Leedie were raped and beaten to death by local handyman, mechanic and convicted sex offender Paul Stephen Osbourne at Warana Beach, Queensland.
  • 25 January 1996 – Hillcrest murders – Peter May shot and killed his three children, his estranged wife and her parents in the Brisbane suburb of Hillcrest before killing himself.
  • January 1996 – March 1997 – The Claremont serial murders – unsolved murders of two young Australian women and the unresolved disappearance of a third in 1996 and 1997 in Claremont
  • 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.
  • 14 September 1996 – Keli Lane was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of her two-day-old daughter, Tegan, whose birth she had concealed.
  • 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 by Emad Sleiman while trying to break up a fight at the General Bourke Hotel in Parramatta, New South Wales.
  • 15 June 1997 – Jaidyn Leskie, 15 months, 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 began with the slaying of Alphonse Gangitano in his home, most likely by Jason Moran. The last victim was 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 southern suburbs of Adelaide by Brett Stuart Williams and Lawrence Hersbach in the driveway of Williams' home. 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.
  • 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 12.
  • 3 August 1999 – La Trobe University shooting – Jonathan Brett Horrocks walked into the cafeteria at La Trobe university in Melbourne, Victoria, armed with a 38-calibre revolver handgun and opened fire, killing cafeteria manager Leon Capraro and wounding a woman who was a student at the university.

    • 2000s

  • 29 February 2000 – Katherine Knight stabbed, skinned, partially cooked and cannibalised 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 by Lebanese youths 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 paedophile 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 a two-and-a-half hour time frame in their North Ryde home in Sydney, NSW.
  • 11 July 2001 – Ethan Joseph Wilkes of Brisbane was convicted of raping and torturing his daughter Patricia Ann Wilkes, for nine years, since she was seven. When he assumed that he had accidentally killed her with an overdose of heroin, he dumped her body in a nearby park. A good samaritan had found her barely alive and called for help. Patricia survived and Wilkes is serving the maximum of less than 20 years in prison.
  • 12 July 2001 – Carolyn Matthews was repeatedly stabbed in the kitchen of her West Lakes home by David William Key on the orders of her husband, Kevin, and his lover, Michelle Burgess, to maintain their affair.
  • 14 July 2001 – British tourists Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio were assaulted near Barrow Creek, Northern Territory by Bradley John Murdoch; Falconio has never been found and Murdoch was subsequently found guilty of his murder.
  • 16 July 2001 – Peter James Knight, an anti-abortion activist, walked into an abortion clinic in East Melbourne armed with a rifle. Knight shot dead security guard Stephen Gordon Rogers and was later overpowered by staff in the abortion clinic. After his arrest, Knight was charged and convicted of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
  • 1 September 2001 – Former CIB chief Don Hancock and his friend Lou Lewis were killed in a car bombing in Perth, Western Australia.
  • 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.
  • 26 May 2002 – A Vietnamese man walked into a Vietnamese wedding reception in Cabramatta Sydney, New South Wales armed with a handgun and opened fire, wounding seven people.
  • 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 a four-day chase and taken into custody in connection with a worldwide heroin smuggling operation.
  • 25 October 2003 – Greenacre double murder – A man and a woman were shot dead in a house in the suburb of Greenacre, Sydney, the result of a feud between two Middle Eastern crime families. Twenty-four-year-old Ziad Abdulrazak was shot 10 times in the chest and head and 22-year-old Mervat Hamka was shot twice in the neck while she slept in her bedroom. Up to 100 shots were fired into the house by four men who were later arrested and convicted of the murders.
  • 30 November 2003 – Cyclist Ian Humphery was struck 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 trial.
  • 7 December 2003 – Daniel Morcombe was abducted from under an overpass on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland while waiting for a bus; his remains were not found until 2012. Brett Peter Cowan was convicted of Morcombe's murder in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison.
  • 31 December 2003 – convicted paedophile 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.
  • 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.
  • 30 May 2005 – Toowoomba triple murder – the bodies of three men, two aged 17 and one aged 30, were found in a house in Toowoomba, Queensland. The three victims were fatally beaten with metal bars and hammers. Dental records were needed to identify the victims due to the severity of their injuries. The murders were committed by three male youths, two aged 16 and one aged 17. One of the 16-year-olds and the 17-year-old were charged with three counts of murder while the other 16-year-old was charged with one count of murder.
  • 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 – Eight-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.
  • 30 June 2008 – Cowra murders – John Walsh used an axe to murder his wife, his grandson, aged 7, and his granddaughter, aged 5. Walsh then used the axe in the attempted murder of his daughter, who was a police officer, after she arrived home from work at the house in the town of Cowra, New South Wales. His daughter survived the attack and Walsh was later arrested and charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
  • 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.
  • 29 January 2009 – Arthur Freeman murdered his four-year-old daughter Darcy by throwing her off the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne, Victoria. She fell 58 metres into the river below the bridge where she drowned.
  • 7 February 2009 – 2009 Victorian bushfires – Arsonists lit several fires contributing to the deaths of 173 people.
  • 22 March 2009 – Hells Angels bikie member Anthony Zervas was murdered at Sydney International airport by Commacheros bikie member Mick Hawi and other Commacheros bikie members. He was repeatedly stabbed and bashed over the head with a bollard.
  • 2 June 2009 – Violence against Indians stirred up international controversy.
  • 18 July 2009 – Lin family murders – Five members of the Lin family were found dead in their home in Epping, New South Wales.
  • 3 September 2009 – Millionaire businessman Michael McGurk was shot dead outside his home in Cremorne, New South Wales.
  • December 2009 - Deaths of Karlie Pearce-Stevenson and Khandalyce Pearce - A mother and her two year old infant were killed, and the killer later used identity fraud to impersonate the dead mother and withdraw roughly $90,000 from her bank accounts.

    • 2010s

  • 10 April 2010 – Rajesh Osborne shot and killed his three children, 12 year-old Asia, 10-year-old Jairus and 7-year-old Grace, before killing himself in Roxburgh Park, Victoria.
  • 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 – Kapunda triple murder – Jason Alexander Downie repeatedly stabbed and killed Andrew, Rose and Chantelle Rowe in a frenzied attack at their home in Kapunda, South Australia.
  • 29 January 2011 – Valentina Strabach, a paranoid schizophrenic woman, murdered 79-year-old Murray Quartermaine by stabbing him 234 times in his South Perth home before cutting off his toes and genitals.
  • 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 was stabbed multiple times by two men in his Hamilton South home. Dent died four days later in hospital from his injuries.
  • 7 September 2011 – Forty-eight-year-old Kim Patterson murdered her 14-year-old daughter, Sidonie Thompson, with an axe in her bed in their Paddington home before driving to the Brisbane Story Bridge where she took her own life by jumping; her 12-year-old son remained in the stationary car.
  • 18 November 2011 – Roger Kingsley Dean deliberately set fire to two rooms at the Quakers Hill Nursing Home to hide his theft of prescription drugs; 11 residents were killed in the blaze and eight others injured. Dean pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eleven consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus 12 years without parole.
  • 5 December 2011 – Heather Glendinning murdered her two daughters, 12-year-old Jane Cuzzens and 10-year-old Jessica Cuzzens, subsequently taking her own life in Port Dennison, Western Australia.
  • 28 April 2012 – A man opened fire in a busy shopping mall in Robina on the Gold Coast, Queensland, shooting Bandidos bikie Jacques Teamo. A woman who was an innocent bystander was also injured from a shotgun blast to the leg. Neither of the victims died, but the incident highlighted the recent increase in gun crime across major Australian cities including Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.
  • 2 May 2012 - Geoffrey Webber stabbed Luke Aaron Robins to death with a 30-centimetre kitchen knife as Robins waited for a bus at Brookvale, but Webber was later found unfit to stand trial
  • 22 May 2012 – A man and two young children were found dead by police in a house in Leanyer, Northern Territory. The 23-year-old man was the father and stepfather of the two children, a boy and a girl, aged 4 and 8.
  • 23 May 2012 – Christopher 'Badness' Binse, a career criminal well known to police, was arrested after a 44-hour siege at an East Keilor home in Melbourne's north-west. During the siege, Binse fired several shots at police and refused to co-operate with negotiators; eventually tear gas had to be used to force him out of the house, at which point he refused to put down his weapon and was then sprayed with a volley of non-lethal bullets.
  • 22 September 2012 – Radio producer Jill Meagher was raped and murdered by convicted criminal Adrian Bayley. She was abducted while walking approximately five minutes to her home from a bar on Sydney Road in Brunswick, Victoria a suburb north of Melbourne. Her body was buried in a shallow grave along the road verge of Blackhill Road, Gisborne South.
  • 4 December 2012 – Quorn murders – Jose Omonte Extrada murdered his girlfriend Rebecca Wild in Quorn, South Australia by stabbing her 29 times and striking her over the head with an axe 9 times. He also murdered Jasinta Leigh Fullerton by repeatedly striking her over the head with the axe after she intervened to try to help Wild who she saw being attacked by Extrada.
  • 15 December 2012 – Aaron Carlino murdered drug dealer Stephen Cookson in his East Perth home by shooting him twice in the head and then cut up and dismembered the body. He buried Cookson's arms, legs and torso in the backyard of his house and wrapped his head in a plastic bag and dumped it on Rottnest Island. Cookson's head was later found washed up on Rottnest Island by an 11-year-old girl. Carlino was convicted of the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
  • 8 March 2013 – Queen Street mall siege – Lee Matthew Hiller entered the shopping mall on Queen Street, Brisbane, Queensland armed with a handgun and threatened shoppers and staff, causing a 90-minute siege which ended when he was shot and wounded in the arm by a police officer from the Specialist Emergency Response Team. Hiller was then taken to hospital and treated for his injury; he pleaded guilty to 20 charges and was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail with a non-parole period of two years and three months.
  • 29 July 2013 – Two bikie gang associates, Vasko Boskovski and Bassil Hijazi, were shot dead in two separate shooting incidents minutes apart in south-west Sydney, New South Wales. Hijazi had survived a previous attempt against his life when he was shot inside his car the week before.
  • 29 December 2013 – Lesley John Cameron raped and murdered Tamara Horstman by bashing her over the head with a hammer and stabbing her 11 times with a pair of scissors, 6 times in the heart and 5 times in the neck, and murdered her mother Maureen Horstman by bashing her over the head with a hammer and stabbing her once in the heart with a pair of scissors in their Warwick home in Western Australia.
  • 12 February 2014 – 11-year-old Grade 6 school boy Luke Batty was bashed with a cricket bat and stabbed to death at his local cricket practice in Tyabb on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. He was murdered by his father Greg Anderson, who was later shot dead by Victoria Police. Anderson apparently committed the crime as retribution against ex-wife Rosie Batty.
  • 19 February 2014 – Thomas Hemming murdered Robert and Cheryl Adamson by stabbing them to death in their Murrumbeena, Victoria home.
  • 27 March 2014 – 21-year-old French student Sophie Collombet was raped and murdered by being bludgeoned in a park in Brisbane. Benjamin James Milward was later arrested and charged with her murder.
  • 4 September 2014 – A fire that was deliberately lit killed three people and seriously wounded three other people in Sydney. Two of the victims killed were a young mother Bianka O'Brien and her baby son Jude. Adeel Khan, a shop owner, was arrested and charged.
  • 9 September 2014 – Lockhart massacre – Geoff Hunt shot and killed his wife, Kim, his 10-year-old son Fletcher, and his daughters Mia, eight and Phoebe, six before killing himself on a farm in Lockhart in the Riverina district near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. The body of Geoff Hunt and a firearm were later found in a dam on the farm by police divers and a suicide note written by Geoff Hunt was also found inside the house on the farm.
  • 23 September 2014 − 2014 Endeavour Hills stabbings – Two Police officers, one Victorian, one Australian Federal Police (AFP), were stabbed and wounded outside Endeavour Hills Police station in Melbourne by 18-year-old Numan Haider. After stabbing the officers, Haider was shot dead by the wounded Victorian officer.
  • 5 October 2014 – Marcus Peter Volke murdered his transgender partner Mayang Prasetyo, then dismembered the body and boiled the body parts in the kitchen of the house where he and his partner lived in the suburb of Teneriffe, Queensland. Volke later committed suicide by cutting his throat.
  • 22 October 2014 – Wedderburn shootings – Ian Jamieson shot dead Peter Lockhart, Peter's wife Mary and Mary's son Greg Holmes on two farm properties in Wedderburn, Victoria over a property dispute. Jamieson surrendered to police after a three-and-a-half hour siege.
  • 7 November 2014 – Jordy Brook carjacked a Channel 7 news cameraman at gun point during a crime spree on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. He was later captured and arrested by police after luring police on a high speed chase and crashing the car.
  • 8 November 2014 – Brendan John Lindsay, a drug addict with a history of mental illness, took lunch bar worker Sheila Tran hostage at knife point in Carlisle, Western Australia. While taking the woman hostage he made threats to kill her, and entered a siege with police which ended with Lindsay being shot dead after he stabbed the hostage. Tran was caught in the crossfire and was later taken to Royal Perth Hospital and underwent surgery.
  • 12 November 2014 – Jamie Edwards and Joelene Joyce, a married couple who were drug dealers, were found shot dead in a car on a highway in the town of Moama, New South Wales.
  • 15 December 2014 – 2014 Sydney hostage crisis – Seventeen people were taken hostage in a cafe in Martin Place, Sydney by Man Haron Monis. The hostage crisis was resolved in the early hours of 16 December, sixteen hours after it commenced, when armed police stormed the premises. Monis and two hostages were killed in the course of the crisis.
  • 19 December 2014 – Cairns child killings – Eight children aged between 18 months to 15 years were stabbed to death in a home in Cairns, Queensland.
  • 3 March 2015 – Biddeston murders – Derek Sharpely shot and killed his pregnant 27-year-old daughter and 7-year-old grandson before killing himself in Biddeston, Queensland.
  • 17 March 2015 – 17-year-old schoolgirl Masa Vukotic was stabbed to death in a random attack while she walked through a park in Doncaster, Victoria. Footage showed Sean Christian Price running from the scene, and the next day he raped a woman in a bookshop, before handing himself in and pleading guilty to the murder and the rape. Price was in prison in 2012 for sex-related crimes, including the rape of a 13-year-old girl. He was on bail at the time of the attacks, and during his bail hearing in 2014 statements had been given by psychologists and psychiatrists that he did not like taking medication, and that there was a risk that a deterioration in his mental condition would lead him to "stalk and assault women". Victorian Corrections Minister Wade Noonan said the parole decision to let Price out into the community was a "catastrophic failure".
  • 29 March 2015 – Cai Xia Liao murdered four year old Alistair Kwong and his grandmother by stabbing them to death with garden shears in their Melbourne home. She was later arrested, charged and convicted of the murders and was sentenced to life in prison.
  • 8 April 2015 – 26-year-old schoolteacher Stephanie Scott was reported missing after last being seen at Leeton High School in Leeton, New South Wales. School cleaner Vincent Stanford was arrested several days later and initially charged with her murder, and later additionally charged with aggravated sexual assault. Scott's burned body was later found by police in Cocoparra National Park. On 19 July 2016, Stanford pleaded guilty to Scott's murder and aggravated sexual assault. In March 2016, Stanford's twin brother Marcus was charged with being an accessory after the fact.
  • 27 June 2015 – Hermidale triple murder – the bodies of three people, two men and a woman, were found shot dead on a property in a rural farming community in the town of Hermidale west of Nyngan. The bodies of 28-year-old Jacob Cumberland, his father 59-year-old Stephen Cumberland and a 36-year-old woman were found with gun shot wounds, the body of Jacob Cumberland was found on the drive way of the property, the body of the 36-year-old woman was found in the backyard of the property and the body of Stephen Cumberland was found in a burnt out caravan on the property. 61-year-old Allan O'Connor was later arrested and charged with the murders.
  • 5 July 2015 – A 40-year-old man was found dead inside a hotel room in the Crown metropol hotel in Melbourne. The man was found dead inside the 8th floor room with a cut/slash to his throat, as a result of an unknown dispute. A 28-year-old man was later arrested and charged with the murder, however is yet to be convicted; trial pending.
  • 28 August 2015 - Edward Herbert attempted to murder his three children, his two daughters aged six and three and his son aged seven, by dousing them in petrol and setting them on fire in their home in the suburb of Doubleview, Western Australia. The three children were taken to hospital in a critical condition and later recovered. Herbert was arrested and charged with the attempted murders of his children.
  • 8 September 2015 – 24-year-old Tara Brown was attacked in a road rage incident by her ex-partner Lionel Patea, a member of the Bandido's outlaw motorcycle gang. He forced her off the road in his car while she was driving, then got out of his car and dragged her out of her car and repeatedly bashed her with a metal bar. She was later taken to hospital in a critical condition and was put on life support, she died two days later from her injuries. Patea was arrested and charged with her murder.
  • 9 September 2015 – A 37-year-old man in Lalor Park, western Sydney murdered his 63-year-old mother and 8-year-old nephew. He bashed his mother over the head with a garden statue and repeatedly stabbed her and then he repeatedly stabbed his nephew. The bodies of the woman and the boy were found on the front garden of the home. The 37-year-old man was later arrested and charged with two counts of murder.
  • 10 September 2015 – Karin Lock was shot dead in a McDonald's restaurant in the Gold Coast by her ex-husband Stephen Lock, who then turned the gun on himself and shot himself dead.
  • 2 October 2015 - 2015 Parramatta shooting – Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, a 15-year-old boy, shot and killed Curtis Cheng, an unarmed police civilian finance worker, outside the New South Wales Police Force headquarters in Parramatta, Australia. Jabar was subsequently shot and killed by special constables who were protecting the police station.
  • 6 November 2015 - two men were murdered from being speared to death and another man was wounded from being stabbed in the back with a machete in the remote Aboriginal community of Angurugu in the Northern Territory. The murders were sparked by a feud between two rival Aboriginal families living in the community. 13 people were later arrested and charged with the murders of the two men and the attempted murder of the third man.
  • 6 December 2015 - Cara Lee Hall murdered her husband Glen Hall by stabbing him to death and then attempted to murder two of her children, two boys aged 11 and 4, by stabbing them in the suburb of Leda Western Australia. She was later arrested and charged with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder.
  • 10 December 2015 - 51 year old primary school teacher Brian Liston was stabbed to death in a random attack as he waited for a bus at a bus stop in Camperdown Sydney by 28 year old William Cahill, who was later arrested and charged with his murder.
  • 14 December 2015 - Frankston siege – Trevor Doherty attacked a man with a knife at different locations: he stabbed him in the back and cut his throat. He then took three people hostage, two women and a man, in a house at another location which resulted in a siege in the suburb of Frankston, Victoria. The siege lasted 12 hours and came to an end after Special Operations Group officers were forced to enter the home after Doherty stabbed one of the female hostages in the leg. Doherty was shot twice and wounded by a Special Operations Group officer, once in the stomach and once in the leg. Doherty and the female hostage and the man he attacked were later taken to hospital with Doherty under arrest and under police guard. The male victim later died from his injuries while Doherty and the female hostage recovered from their injuries.Doherty was later charged with murder, attempted murder and kidnapping.
  • 4 January 2016 - Damian Little murdered his two sons, four year old Koda and nine month old Hunter, by shooting them in the head with a rifle. He then killed himself by shooting himself with the rifle and driving off a cliff into an ocean in the town of Port Lincoln, South Australia. The bodies of Little and his sons were later found and recovered in the vehicle by police divers.
  • 6 January 2016 - A 53 year old Chinese man murdered his eight month old granddaughter by stabbing her to death and then tried to murder his wife and daughter by stabbing them, in the suburb of Parkinson, Brisbane.
  • 12 January 2016 - A police officer and a security guard were shot and wounded at Nepean hospital in Sydney after responding to an incident in which a nurse was being threatened and taken hostage by a man armed with a pair of scissors. The man was arrested and taken into police custody and later charged.
  • 24 January 2016 - Corey Breton and Luliana Triscaru were murdered over a drug debt in the suburb of Logan, Brisbane. They were bashed and their mouths were covered with duct tape and Breton was stabbed once in the leg. They were then both shot in the head and their bodies were put inside a two-metre metal box which was dumped in a river. The metal box was later found and recovered by police divers. Five men and one woman were arrested and are charged with their murders.
  • 27 January 2016 - A fight between two rival Aboriginal gangs which occurred at the Esplanade train station in Perth, Western Australia, resulted in the murder of a 26 year old Aboriginal man who was stabbed to death by two 19 year old Aboriginal men and an 11 year old Aboriginal boy. The two 19 year old Aboriginal men and the 11 year old Aboriginal boy were later arrested and charged with murder.
  • 7 March 2016 - Finks bikie gang member Wayne Williams armed himself with an AK 47 rifle and shot and killed Michael Bassal and shot and wounded his brothers Terry Bassal and Mark Bassal outside an industrial building in the suburb of Ingleburn Sydney. Williams then barricaded himself inside the building and took three hostages, resulting in a siege and stand off with police. He later released the three hostages and shot himself dead. The shootings were committed as a result of a business deal gone wrong.
  • 26 April 2016 - Banksia Grove triple shooting - Three men were shot with one, 23 year old Mitch Finnerty, killed and the other two, a father and son aged 53 and 24, wounded outside a house in the suburb of Banksia Grove, Perth, Western Australia. The shooting was the result of a property dispute which involved members of the Rebels and Coffin Cheaters outlaw motorcycle gangs.
  • 29 April 2016 - A gunman opened fire inside the Centro shopping centre in Bankstown, Sydney. He shot and killed convicted criminal Walid Ahmad, shot and wounded a man who was with Ahmad, and also wounded a woman who was an innocent bystander. The shooting was targeted and was committed as a result of an ongoing feud between two rival Middle Eastern organised crime gangs.
  • 1 May 2016 - White ribbon and domestic violence activist Karen Belej was shot dead inside her home by her partner Brandon Osborne in the town of Mildura Victoria. Osborne was later arrested and charged with her murder.
  • 26 July 2016 - An 81 year old woman was stabbed to death in her home and another woman and a man were stabbed and wounded on a street after a 32 year old man went on a rampage in Townsville Queensland. The man was under the influence of drugs and was arrested and taken into custody by police. He was later charged with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder.
  • 6 August 2016 - 16 year old Aidan Smith was stabbed to death and six other people were stabbed and wounded by a group of men at a night time party in North West Sydney. The mass stabbing happened after a group of men armed with knives gatecrashed the party. Numerous men were later arrested and charged, among them a 20 year old man who was charged with murder.
  • 23 August 2016 - French national Smail Ayad stabbed to death Mia Ayliffe Chung and Tom Jackson and stabbed and wounded another person, at a backpackers hostel in Townsville, Queensland. Ayad was later arrested and charged with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
  • 11 September 2016 - 22 year old ISIL sympathiser Ihsas Khan stabbed and wounded a 59 year old man in a terror related attack in the suburb of Minto Sydney. He was later arrested and charged with one count of attempted murder.
  • 20 January 2017 - 2017 Melbourne car attack. Dimitrious "Jimmy" Gargasoulas is alleged to have stabbed his brother and taken his girlfriend hostage before driving erratically in Melbourne's CBD and ramming into thirty pedestrians on a footpath, killing six. Gargasoulas has been charged with six counts of murder.
  • 1 March 2017- Three homeless people who were squatting in an abandoned factory in Melbourne are murdered in an arson attack. The victims were a man and two women. The perpetrator Darran Patrick Clover was later arrested and was charged with three counts of murder. He is currently awaiting trial.
  • 5 March 2017 - A 22-year old British woman was put through a two month long ordeal in Queensland whereupon she was held against her will, raped repeatedly and strangled on at least four occasions. She suffered multiple injuries to her body most specifically to the face, vaginal and neck area. She was discovered by police behind the wheel of a car during a routine traffic stop who later found her 22-year old captor from Cairns hidden in a storage space in the back of the car.

    • References

    Timeline of major crimes in Australia Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA