6 October 1909 –
Martha Rendell is hanged in Western Australia for the murder of three of her stepchildren.
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.
26 February 1929 – Father Andrew Thomas Edgar Archur, murders his five children and his wife and then sets fire to their house in
Devonport, Tasmania. He killed himself after the attack.[SUP]
[13][/SUP]
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[SUP]
[14][/SUP]
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,[SUP]
[17][/SUP] later commuted to life imprisonment.
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,[SUP]
[19][/SUP] later commuted to life imprisonment.
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.
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 his 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 approached the house, Majka killed himself.
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.[SUP]
[24][/SUP]
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.[SUP]
[25][26]
[/SUP]
