MYSTERY MURDER

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 115, 11 November 1935, Page 10

MYSTERY MURDER

"PYJAMA GIRL"' CASE

THE HUNT STILL ON

POLICE REMAIN HOPEFUL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, October 29.

Although the investigation has cost New South Wales about £10,000,' the Criminal Investigation Branch here is relentlessly following all clues likely to assist in the identification of the "Pyjama Girl," whose charred body was found in a culvert near Albury in September, 1934, and who is still unidentified. The detectives believe that once they know her name, they will clear up the crime in a matter of days.

"The money has been well spent," declared a high police official. "If it cost ten times that much to apprehend the murderer, the money would be expended, on a very worth-while object. It is a crime which must be cleared up, and we intend to keep going until the mystery is solved."

A dozen detectives have been employed at various times in the sifting of clues. Practically all the clues have been followed to their end, and on each occasion the police have found themselves just where they started. But they still have clues not disclosed. There are some aspects- of the case which the C.1.8. men, even now, will not discuss.

Fourteen months have elapsed since the battered and charred body of the slim girl in yellow pyjamas was found, and even at this late stage many of the detectives do not know the whole of the details of the crime so far discovered. The huge cost of the inquiries includes wages of special men who have done nothing else since the date of the murder, and the printing of circulars and photographs, which have been sent overseas in thousands. Every police station and every policeman in New South Wales has been supplied with half a dozen separate photographs, including closeups, of : the murdered girl, whose pecu-liarly-shaped cars, in particular, have I been photographically reproduced.

Excepting when some particularly baffling case has required his attention, Detective-Sergeant Mcßae, prince of Sydney murder investigators, has been permanently employed on the "pyjama girl" mystery, and another detective, with a thorough knowledge of business methods, has been engaged for twelve months solely on the correspondence section of the inquiry, both overseas and inter-state. Even now the detectives frequently receive letters from persons who think they can assist. They have not so far received through correspondence any direct information, but they nevertheless welcome letters from any part of the world, for they feel that it is in this way that eventually the vital clue will be received. Stamps and travelling expenses, mainly in the three eastern States of Australia, have accounted for much of the expenditure. The body of the murdered girl still lies in a bath of formalin in a room in the medical school at the Sydney University. Occasionally the room is opened to admit somebody taken there by the police in the hope of esablishing identity, for. though the expectation is fading, the police have by no means given up hope. Mysteries almost as difficult have been solved in the past.