Slums & Guns: True Crime Running Tour

Discover Melbourne’s dark side on Fit City Tour’s Slums & Guns True Crime Running Tour. On this riveting city tour, runners will learn all about several true crime stories that took place on the pavement beneath their sneakers. Led by your very own Melbourne tour guide, this rather eerie tour has more plot twists than your favorite true crime podcast. 

Our 9km running tour, operating daily at 9am, begins at the city’s cultural hub, Federation Square. This venue for the arts sits on the edge of Melbourne’s central business district, offering visitors the opportunity to enjoy a variety of restaurants and shops. As we embark on an adventure of mystery and intrigue, we’ll visit the scene of the horrific 1921 Gun Alley Murder and share stories of Melbourne’s most infamous serial killer, Frederick Deeming, better known by the name Jack the Ripper. Along the way, we’ll visit the vibrant Chinatown, settled in the 1850s during the Victorian gold rush, and known for being the longest continuous Chinese settlement in the Western World. 

Your tour guide will continue to illuminate the true crime stories that make up Melbourne’s darker past. Runners will hear the story of early 1900’s crime king, Squizzy Taylor, a prominent gangster with a menacing reputation, as well as the bizarre tale of the Brownout Strangler, an American soldier and serial killer. The tour even explores the ghostly Little Lon and Old Melbourne Gaol. Little Lon, once Melbourne's red light district, is made up of many narrow back alleys and small cottages that once housed the city's brothels. In the nineteenth century, this notorious district was overridden with criminals and prostitutes. The Old Melbourne Gaol, once a prominent jail, offers runners a glimpse into the bluestone building that housed some of history’s most dangerous criminals.

This epic running tour will finish with one last story and a cup of coffee on Degraves Street, Melbourne’s first and most famous laneway, and where one of the characters you'll meet used to spend time and shoot at passersby. We’ll part ways back at Federation Square where our true crime excursion began.