Burke and Hare murders two men were hanged in December 1831 for the crime. A bill was quickly introduced into Parliament, and gained royal assent nine months later to become the Anatomy Act 1832. This Act authorised dissection on bodies from workhouses unclaimed after 48 hours, and ended the practice of anatomising as part of the death sentence for murder. The events of the West Port murders have made appearances in fiction. They are referred to in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1884 short story, "The Body Snatcher", and Marcel Schwob told their story in the last chapter of "Imaginary Lives" (1896), while the Edinburgh-based author
Snowtown murders Snowtown murders The Snowtown murders (also known as the bodies-in-barrels murders) were a series of murders committed by John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and James Vlassakis between August 1992 and May 1999, in South Australia. A fourth person, Mark Haydon, was convicted for helping to dispose of the bodies. The trial was one of the longest and most publicised in Australian legal history. Only one of the victims was killed in Snowtown itself, which is approximately north of Adelaide, and neither the eleven victims nor the three perpetrators were from the town. Although motivation for the murders is unclear, the killers