- 3 days ago
The Case of The Pyjama Girl that fascinated Australia in 1934 and continued to do so for the next 10 years, and in many ways it still does today.
Please remember to subscribe and hit the bell icon as well as leave a like and a comment for more videos every week!
Brief Case is a True Crime Channel focusing on old or lost cases that have been forgotten to history. If you have any recommendations for future cases that you would like to bring to light, feel free to reach out to me to: briefcaseuk@gmail.com
Music by CO.AG Music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwZB4l43iTw&t=105s
Music by Myuu -https://www.youtube.com/user/myuuji
Music by Kevin Macleod - https://incompetech.com
Please remember to subscribe and hit the bell icon as well as leave a like and a comment for more videos every week!
Brief Case is a True Crime Channel focusing on old or lost cases that have been forgotten to history. If you have any recommendations for future cases that you would like to bring to light, feel free to reach out to me to: briefcaseuk@gmail.com
Music by CO.AG Music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwZB4l43iTw&t=105s
Music by Myuu -https://www.youtube.com/user/myuuji
Music by Kevin Macleod - https://incompetech.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:08Today we are looking at a case from the first half of the 20th century. So sit back as we
00:14go to
00:15Australia. In the early 1930s Australia suffered during the period of the Great Depression. This
00:24began with the Wall Street crash of 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. Like other nations
00:30Australia experienced years of high unemployment, poverty, deflation, low incomes and lost opportunities
00:38for economic growth and personal advancement. At the time the Australian economy and foreign policy
00:44was largely based on its place as a primary producer of products such as wool and wheat
00:49which were exported around the world. These industries greatly suffered from the collapse
00:53in international demand. By 1932 unemployment in Australia was around 30% and there was a large
01:00decline in gross domestic product. The economic crisis also had a significant social impact
01:06as the pressure on many families was considerable which resulted in an increase in domestic violence
01:11a subject that was not widely discussed in the 1930s. On the 1st of September 1934 a young farmer
01:19named Tom Griffiths was leading his prize bull along the Howe Long Road just outside Albury a city in the
01:26state of New South Wales on the board with the state of Victoria and next to the vast Murray River.
01:32He noticed
01:33that there was something in a culvert that was running under the road. He also sensed that there was a
01:38strong
01:38smell of kerosene. When he looked closer he saw a hessian grain sack that was covering part of a partially
01:45burnt
01:45body. It looked like whoever had put it there had done so as it would not have been visible to
01:50anyone
01:51who may have been driving by. He could see that the victim's head had been wrapped in a towel and
01:56it looked
01:56like they had been in a struggle as their face was badly beaten. He called the police who soon arrived
02:01at the scene.
02:02The body was taken back to Albury where an autopsy was carried out. The victim was female, had brown eyes
02:09and it was estimated that she would have been in her 20s. There was a small bullet in the deceased's
02:14throat
02:14but the pathologist determined that death had been caused by the severe blows she had received to her
02:20head. She had been dressed in yellow silk pyjamas with a Chinese dragon motive. The police considered this
02:26to be important as such clothing would have been expensive and quite rare especially in this time of
02:32economic hardship. They also believed that the victim had been killed elsewhere and that her body had been
02:37transported to the culvert in the Howlong Road. The estimated time of death was four days earlier on the 28th
02:44of
02:44August. The scene was examined and witness statements were taken. No one had reported seeing anything
02:50suspicious but one witness claimed to have seen a fire in the early hours of the 29th of August. It
02:56had however rained
02:57that night which would account for why the body had only been partially burnt. The police were anxious
03:02to identify the victim so placed the body in ice and put it on display at the Albury mortuary but
03:07despite the many people who came to view it no one seemed to recognize the deceased. As the injury
03:13suffered by the victim was so severe a police artist was instructed to make a drawing of how the young
03:18lady may have looked. This was then passed on to the newspapers as the search to find the body found
03:24on the Howlong Road intensified. The newspapers printed the sketch and embellished the story to try and make it
03:30out to be far more mysterious. As the victim had been discovered wearing silk pajamas they referred
03:36to her quite simply as the pajama girl. With no new leads the body was then transferred to Sydney
03:42where it was placed in a bath of formalin and put on public display at the university medical school.
03:48By now the case was becoming far more widely known and as the thousands of people visited the university
03:53to see the corpse several names were suggested as to who the deceased may be. Two names in particular
03:59were of much interest to the police. Anna Philomena Morgan and Linda Agostini both women were missing
04:05were of a similar age and had a resemblance to the artist's sketch of the pajama girl.
04:10A nurse named Margaret McGrath who often visited Linda at her flat identified the body to be her
04:16friend Linda Agostini and a gentleman named George Kempf had told police that the photos and the sketch of
04:22the pajama girl looked very much like Linda. After viewing the body he was not sure but after a second
04:28viewing he was positive that it was the body of Linda Agostini. He said that he had known her for
04:34some time but had heard nothing from her since January 1934. The police started to look in more
04:40detail about the possibility that the pajama girl was indeed Linda Agostini. They discovered that she
04:47had been born Florence Linda Platt in England on the 12th of September 1905 and was brought up in Forest
04:53Hill, a district in South East London. As a teenager she worked at a confectionery shop but when she was
05:0019 years old she left England and traveled to New Zealand where she lived for the next three years.
05:06She then relocated to Australia and settled in Sydney. Detectives tried to piece together her life.
05:12They discovered that while in Sydney she worked at a cinema and resided in a boarding house on Darlinghurst
05:18Road in the King's Cross area of the city they were told that she liked to go out and was
05:23not a person
05:23who wanted to conform to what was considered acceptable behavior for a young woman in the late
05:281920s and early 1930s. She was known to have entertained young men, drank heavily and found it difficult to
05:35adjust to a more respectable lifestyle. However she seemed to have started to settle down when on the 22nd of
05:42April 1930 she married Antonio Agostini in a Sydney registry office. Antonio was two years older than
05:49Linda and like her had not been born in Australia. He had migrated there from Italy in 1927 and worked
05:56as a barber. They first met in 1928 and after a turbulent two-year relationship got married the
06:03marriage was not easy. Linda continued to drink and occasionally left him only to return a few weeks
06:09later. He wanted to get her away from the influence of her friends so in 1933 they moved to Melbourne
06:15settling in the suburb of Calton where Antonio found work in the Italian language newspaper
06:21named Il Gionale and Linda worked as a hairdresser. Despite this the couple would still often argue.
06:28The police contacted people who had known the missing Linda Agostini but none of them thought that the
06:33body or the photos resembled their friend neither did Antonio Agostini. He did however supply the
06:39detectives with the name of his wife's dentist. When the dental records of the pajama girl were checked
06:45they did not match with Linda's. She was then eliminated as a possible victim. Despite the best
06:50efforts of the police they were unable to identify the pajama girl.
06:57Time passed. The second world war began in 1939 and the case of the pajama girl had largely been
07:04forgotten. In 1942 the body was taken from the university and placed in the police headquarters.
07:10The case was put in a file marked unsolved and was occasionally worked on. Then in 1944
07:17police commissioner William Mackay took another look at it. The reputation of both the commissioner
07:23and the New South Wales police force was not as good as it once had been. So in order to
07:28try and
07:28improve the public's opinion of the police he assigned two new detectives to examine the evidence
07:33in the case. The identity of the victim was again investigated and one by one the detectives
07:39eliminated each name on their list. Linda Agostini had initially been dismissed as a possible victim
07:44due to her dental records. Nevertheless the detectives decided to look at them again.
07:50Incredibly it was discovered that the initial dental report was incorrect and they did in fact match
07:55those of the pajama girl who had been found 10 years earlier in Albury. Now they knew the name
08:00of the victim. The police needed to ascertain who had committed this terrible crime. Linda Agostini's
08:06husband seemed to be the most interesting suspect. He had spent the previous four years held in
08:11internment camps due to his political sympathies towards the Italian government who had entered the
08:15second world war on the side of Germany in June 1940. The Australian government considered him
08:21to be an enemy of Australia. He had been released in February 1944 as he was no longer believed to
08:26be
08:27a threat to the country. He had then found work in Sydney as a waiter in the Italian restaurant named
08:32Romano's. Coincidentally a restaurant that was frequented by police commissioner William Mackay.
08:38He asked him to come to the police station as they needed to talk to him about the murder of
08:42his wife
08:4210 years earlier. Antonio was nervous but when at the station proceeded to give a full confession
08:48although he claimed that the death of his wife was an accident. In his statement he said that whilst
08:53living in Melbourne Linda had threatened him with a revolver in an attempt to take it off her. It went
08:59off
08:59and she died. Worried that he might be accused of murder he put the body in his car and drove
09:05to the
09:05other side of the state border at Albury where he placed the body in a culvert poured petrol over it
09:11and in an attempt to make the corpse unrecognisable and destroy any evidence set fire to it. Soon after
09:17he left Melbourne and after a brief spell in Perth returned to live in Sydney. The arrest of Antonio
09:23Agostini and the conclusion of one of the most famous unsolved cases in Australia was a sensation
09:28and was headline news across the country. The suspect was arrested and taken from Sydney to Melbourne
09:34where an inquest took place. The judge needed to establish the identity of the pyjama girl how she
09:42had died and who had been responsible for her death. Although Antonio Agostini had omitted shooting her in
09:48the flat that they shared at 589 Swanston Street in the Melbourne suburb of Colton not everyone believed
09:54the body was actually that of Linda Agostini. A lady named Mrs Jeanette Routledge from Bomberdare in New South
10:01Wales thought that the pyjama girl was in fact her daughter Anna Philomena Morgan. This was supported
10:07by Dr Thomas Benbow who had helped the police on the case in 1939. Detailed photographic comparisons
10:13of facial features of both women were presented to the inquest. There was much discussion about the
10:18deceased dental records which after 10 years had somehow been identified to match those of Linda
10:24Agostini. The victim had blue eyes but witnesses had all said that Linda's were brown and the body
10:29proportions also caused much concerns. The shape of the nose did not match neither did the size of
10:35the breasts. Expert witnesses were called to account for how the victim's eye colour could have changed
10:40after death. When questioned however Mrs Routledge proved to be an unreliable witness. She admitted that
10:47following her daughter's disappearance she had given the police false information so as to avoid
10:51implicating herself. At the end of the inquest the coroner announced that he believed that the pyjama girl
10:57was indeed Linda Agostini and that her husband had been responsible for her death. He then committed
11:02Antonio Agostini for trial on the charge of murder. The trial began on the 19th of June 1944 in the
11:09Supreme Court in Melbourne and Antonio Agostini pleaded not guilty. He did not deny taking the body to
11:16Albury and setting fire to it but maintained that the shooting was an accident. He told the court that
11:21his wife had been threatening with a gun and did an attempt to retrieve it from her. It went off.
11:26When asked where the weapon was he replied that he had thrown it into the river Yarra. The defence
11:32outlined the couple's turbulent relationship. How Linda drank and would disappear for weeks without
11:37letting her husband know where she was. Antonio Agostini had already told police that the head injuries
11:42that according to the pathologist were the cause of the pyjama girl's death had occurred when he
11:47accidentally dropped the body while he was carrying it down the stairs. The proceedings ended on the 28th
11:52of June 1944 and the jury retired to consider the case. They deliberated for two hours before returning
11:59a verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Antonio Agostini was
12:06sentenced to six years imprisonment. He was then sent to the Pentridge prison in Coburg. However,
12:11he did not serve the full six years. He was instead released just four years later. Although now a
12:17free man he would not be allowed to stay in Australia. On the 23rd of August 1948 he was
12:23deported back to his homeland of Italy. He later married a widow named Giuseppina Gazzoni and died
12:29in 1969 at the age of 66. Linda Agostini was finally laid to rest at the Preston Cemetery on the
12:3713th of
12:37July 1944. Her funeral was paid by the state government of Victoria. So the mystery of the
12:44pyjama girl was finally solved or was it? Was the body really the missing Linda Agostini or was her
12:51husband Antonio conveniently set up in order that the under fire police commissioner could close a
12:56high-profile case that had remained unsolved for 10 years? In his 2004 book The Pyjama Girl Mystery,
13:03A True Story of Murder, Obsession and Lies, historian Richard Evans pointed out discrepancies
13:09with the evidence calling Antonio Agostini's conviction the result of police corruption and
13:14a miscarriage of justice. At the trial police commissioner William Mackay had said that he
13:20had not really participated in the investigation but in truth he had personally supervised the case
13:25which had periodically been reviewed since 1938. He had also interviewed witnesses. The commissioner
13:32had also maintained that he had never previously known Antonio Agostini except of course as a waiter
13:38at Romano's Italian restaurant but he had been in charge of the New South Wales Police Department
13:43that had overseen the internment process in 1940. Antonio Agostini was one of those arrested and
13:50interned. There are also questions as to when and how Antonio Agostini's confession was taken.
13:55The police were aware that his wife had gone missing at the same time in 1934 that the body known
14:02as the
14:16pyjama girl and Linda. The victim had a different bust size to Linda, a different shaped nose and her eyes
14:22were a different colour. There were also 125 women who were originally on the police list of possible
14:28identities and despite naming the pyjama girl as Linda Agostini many of the other leads remained
14:34uneliminated and untraced. Antonio claimed to have shot his wife with a revolver when it was in fact a
14:40bullet fired from a pistol that was retrieved from the pyjama girl's throat. He was a universally educated
14:46man who had served in the Italian army so should have known the difference between the two. He also
14:51claimed to have poured petrol over the body before setting it alight when it was in fact kerosene that
14:56was found on the victim. Finally he stated that he had shot his wife on Monday the 27th of August
15:021934
15:03and dumped her body in Albury in the early hours of Tuesday the 28th. Yet the witness had seen the
15:09fire the following day on Wednesday the 29th. Despite all this contradictory evidence very
15:15shortly after being released from his interment Antonio Agostini somewhat conveniently for the
15:21police confessed to killing his wife and disposing of her body on the Victoria New South Wales state
15:27border and despite this terrible crime that he had apparently kept to himself for 10 years he was found
15:32guilty of manslaughter and received a very light sentence. Some would conclude that all of this
15:38may have been a bit too coincidental and a bit too convenient. So if the pyjama girl was not Linda
15:45Agostini who was she and what happened to Linda? It is probably the case that Antonio Agostini did
15:52accidentally kill his wife as he stated in his statement. He also probably disposed of her body
15:57but whether it was under a culvert in Albury or somewhere else still undiscovered is something for
16:03which we may never be entirely sure. Hello everyone and thank you so much for listening. As usual
16:12please leave any comments or feedback you may have and I hope to see you all again in the next
16:18brief case.
Comments