“Pyjama Girl” Mystery Renewed Interest In Case

Southland Times, Issue 23336, 21 October 1937, Page 14

“Pyjama Girl” Mystery Renewed Interest In Case

■RENEWED interest in the “Pyjama Girl” murder at Albury, the most mysterious crime in Australian police annals, has followed the renewal of the reward offered for information and the questions asked in Parliament. No murder investigation in Australia has been so costly, and in no other case have the inquiries extended so far afield. The police departments of Britain, America, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan and China have co-operated. It took six weeks to identify the body of Mabel Ambrose, victim of the famous boot-box tragedy in Melbourne in 1898. In that case the girl’s head was removed and preserved in spirit in a glass jar. Three years and two weeks have passed since the body of the Albury victim was found. It is still unidentified. The complete body, embalmed, lies in a bath of spirit at the museum of the Medical School at the Sydney University. More, than 3009 people have seen the body at Albury and in Sydney, but not one of them has been able to say definitely who the girl was. ‘lmpossible” Happened. Until this case nobody thought it possible that in a comparatively small population of six millions an attractive, well-cared-for woman of 23 or 24 could have been done to death without her identity being established. Yet the impossible has happened. Detectives often declare with emphasis that there is no such thing as “the perfect crime.” In the Albury murder they have the nearest approach that it would be possible even to stage or to depict in fiction. Lack of identification, the basic point in any murder investigation, means that in months of inquiry no progress has been made at all.’ There was no means of knowing where she came from, nor was there the slightest lead that would fix the scene of the murder. There was no means either of knowing or of checking up on the girl’s friends or acquaintances. Head in Culvert. Pushed head first into a storm-water culvert on the Howlong Road, only four miles from Albury, the body of the girl wax found on September 1, 1934. It was clothed only in a pair of canarycoloured pyjamas, proved to be of kave crepe, an expensive fabric which had come probably from China or Japan. Around the girl’s head was wrapped a towel bearing a laundry mark which defied tracing. It was blurred, and looked like the words M.C.O. or R.C.O. From other angles the mark could have been other combinations of letters. Over the towel liad been drawn a potato sack. This, partly burned, carried the stencilled letters D with a gap, L M and E. It was feasible that the word was Dalmore. That is the name of a potatogrowing district near Koowee-rup in Victoria. The sack was of a type that could have come from Dalmore. Yet as potato sacks are sent all over the State and into New South Wales, the word “Dalmore” did not give a lead to the scene of the crime. Ghastly Wound. There was a ghastly wound over the girl’s left eye. It appeared to have been caused with a blow from the back of a tomahawk. .ts force had broken through the front ' bone of the skull and had caused the left eye to collapse. Tire right eye, which was open and staring as in the

case of all violent deaths, was of bluegrey. An attempt had been made to burn the corpse. Oil or petrol had been poured on the pyjama trousers. They were almost burned away, and the pyjama coat was charred in places. The girl’s legs and hips were badly burned. Wind blew the flames through the culvert. They singed the chin and one cheek. That blackness at first looked like bruising, but the embalmers later were able to remove it. To destroy identification it was thought that the murderer would have sought to burn the girl’s face. As that did not happen, it seemed that the murderer had, while engaged in his gruesome task on an open stretch of road, heard a car approaching. » Police Hampered. There was certain lettering on the lower hem of the pyjama coat. This looked like a hopeful lead, but it was proved later to have been a trade mark in Japanese. In the first month of investigation 18 people gave “positive identification.” In each case the girl they named was traced and found alive, as were 720 other missing girls. What hampered the detectives, however, was the fact that the first group of people who sought to identify the body saw a totally different girl from the one seen by later groups. Those who saw her as she was brought in to the Albury Hospital mortuary saw a ghastly body with a gaping hole in the forehead. Dust smeared it, and her fair, dyed hair was tousled through the potato sack being drawn from the head. There were the singe marks on cheek and chin. The face was plumper than the girl’s face was in life. This was caused by the effect of the battering on the head and by the heat of the flames licking through the culvert. It actually was sweL'ng and not plumpness. Embalmer’s Feat. Those who saw the body when it was placed in a bath and covered with a heap of crushed ice to preserve it, saw i different girl. The face began to discolour, altering its whole aspect. Those who saw the body after the embalmers had carried out an amazing job saw the nearest approach t what the girl was like in life. The plumpness had gone. She had finely chiselled features and a delicately shaped and sensitive nose. Her hair r.ad been brushed, her cheeks powdered and rouged. The hole in the forehead had been filled with cotton wool. Her eyebrows had been pencilled in, and lipstick had been applied to her lips.