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sandyhookhistory · 1 year

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“There’s Still A War On” 80 Years Ago, Today - (Monday) November 9th, 1942: While Pvt Edward J. Leonski, a US Army Private – and convicted serial killer – was swinging from the end of a rope in Victoria, Australia (See our previous post this evening, “Lights Out For The Brownout Strangler”), the war went on as gruesomely as ever. In the Caribbean, 275 miles northeast of Barbados, the British steamer “SS Nurmahal” (Photo 1) is torpedoed and sunk by U-154 (Type IXC). A pair of torpedoes sends her beneath than waves in less than thirty seconds… All Hands – 88 Men – go with her. No Survivors. Meanwhile, 20 miles off Tobago, the Norwegian steamer “SS Nidarland” (Photo 2) is sunk by U-67 (IXC). Only one man is lost, and 34 others are able to make to the boats and row ashore to safety. While some ships are sunk without a moment’s warning, other ships manage to give their would-be killers a run for their money. Such is the case 157 miles southeast of Cape St. Francis, South Africa. The tiny British tanker “SS Cyrion” (Photo 3) has been getting chased by U-177 (IXD2) all day long. Due to skilled seamanship, sharp lookouts, and a zigzag pattern, the U-Boat has expended no less than five precious torpedoes that all missed. Chasing her on the surface, the main deck gun is out of action, and the Germans open fire with 20mm and 37 mm cannons. They kill two British sailors, but Cyrion and 44 other men, escape to fight another day – 14 HOURS after the attack began. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, another attack plays out during Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa that began yesterday. The American passenger-liner turned attack-transport USS Leedstown (AP-73, Pic 4), damaged in an air attack, is finished off by U-331’s torpedoes (VIIC). As the ship heels over, the order goes out to Abandon Ship. 59 Officers and Men of the US Navy are killed in the sinking; 104 more are rescued. Meanwhile, it’s a bad week for the German merchant fleet – “Ostland” (No pic) is wrecked on the Swedish coast, and “Wolfram” (Pic 5) hits a mine and sinks in the North Sea off of Holland. Just another day… (at Fort Hancock, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkxCX8AtwHD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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kreepykittysmurdermysteryblog · 6 years

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The Smiling Strangler: Eddie Leonski.

Stepping off the tram at the Beaconsfield Parade stop in Melbourne’s Albert Park, the fresh salty smell of the nearby ocean hit me. It was easy to locate the supermarket which now sits in place of the old shops and alcove were Ivy McLeod, aged 38, had sheltered from the cold whilst waiting for her tram on the fateful night she was killed.

Ivy McLeod.

In the middle of World War Two the Australian government had imposed a brownout on Melbourne and other main Australian cities to reduce risk of attack from Japanese forces. American soldiers had arrived by the tens of thousands to help Australians fight in the south pacific. One of the soldiers, a young man named Eddie Leonski, sent to help protect, instead became a predator of Melbourne women, using the dimly lit streets of Melbourne’s brownout to help carry out his evil and twisted murders.

Eddie Leonski.

After living in this city for over a year the earlier excitement I had when I first arrived in Melbourne had begun to dull, but on the tram ride to Beaconsfield Parade I felt a renewed appreciation. If it’s one thing I love about Melbourne, it is the many well preserved historical buildings. Few things endear me more to a place than visiting historical sites and exploring the areas history. It was sad fate that Ivy made an impromptu visit to her boyfriend on the night of her murder, declined his offer to walk her to the normally safe tram stop, and then appeared to have missed her tram by only minutes due to it leaving early. Ivy had already been through hard times in her life before her murder, she had not heard from her estranged husband in 5 years and had also undergone a premature hysterectomy.

Tram stop, Albert Park, Melbourne. 2018.

The Hotel Victoria, Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park, Melbourne. 2018.

Having drank first at the Victoria Hotel Victoria then the Bleak House hotel, (now in it’s place contemporary bar The Beach) American soldier Eddie Leonski was sitting on a low wall bordering the South Melbourne Beach and Beaconsfield Parade when he heard footsteps across the street and saw a woman, Ivy McLeod. Eddie went over to join Ivy in the alcove in the pretence he was also seeking shelter, once inside the alcove he almost immediately placed an arm across her shoulder, quickly bringing up the other arm to choke her. Ivy collapsed almost instantly, hitting her head which killed her. Eddie began to rearrange her body into lewd positions before being interrupted by a man coming out to inspect from a nearby block of flats.

Beaconsfield Parade, South Melbourne Beach, Melbourne. 2018. (Across the road diagonally is the tram stop and alcove were Ivy sheltered from the cold.)

Walking onto Beaconsfield Parade, I was able to find the Hotel Victoria quite quickly, a beautiful and well maintained historical building across from the beach. Returning to Victoria Avenue, after standing outside the supermarket entrance (as if it were the alcove) which attracted a rather bemused look from the store owner, I caught the tram back to the city and from Elizabeth Street made my way down Collins Street towards Collins Place, the former site of the Astoria Hotel, now an international shopping complex.

Pauline Thompson.

Eddie’s next victim, the attractive 31 year old Pauline Thompson, who also went by the name Coral, had moved to Melbourne to pursue her career as an entertainer, while her husband stayed behind in Bendigo to wait for a work transfer. Believing herself to have been stood up by a young male friend (who was running late) Pauline decided to join the friendly, young and handsome Eddie for drinks after he approached her at the Hospitality Club on Elizabeth Street.

It was at the Astoria Hotel in Collins Place, they downed gin and squashes before Eddie walked with Pauline back to her boarding house on Spring Street, attacking her just outside her front door. Pauline, according to Eddie had put up quite a struggle. After killing and raping her, he arranged her body into a lewd, half naked position as he had with Ivy.

Spring Street, Melbourne. 2018.

Late one May evening in 1942, University lecturer Gladys Hosking, aged 41, was walking home from work, when she ran into Eddie outside a milk bar on the corner of Royal Parade and Gatehouse Street. It was raining and Eddie offered to help the petit woman carry her things while she held her umbrella.

Gladys Hosking.

Arriving outside Gladys boarding house on Park Street, Eddie asked for directions to Camp Pell (the temporary American military base set up in Melbourne’s Royal Park during world war two). According to Eddie, Gladys offered to take him there, so they walked back up to Gatehouse Street and it was on the grass verge just outside Royal Park that Eddie struck, killing the tiny woman quickly, before half undressing and dumping her body down a bank in the park.

Gatehouse Street, Parkville. 2018.

A witness had seen an American soldier walking with Gladys shortly before her death and already on the lookout for the killer of Ivy and the similar murder of Pauline, aswell as a number of attacks on young woman by a young American soldier who fitted the same description, police officers were sent to the American Base to investigate alongside the American military. With the evening growing late, I hurried along Flinders Lane to catch the tram up to Melbourne University, the workplace of Eddie’s final victim. The walk from Melbourne University and down Royal Parade would be beautiful anytime, but in the late evening with the smell of early spring in the air is especially charming.Old Victorian Mansions stand in rows along the broad tree lined street with beautifully maintained gingerbread trimmings and roof turrets. It’s the type of area that makes you almost consider if spending most of your pay check on rent would be worthwhile. Arriving at Royal Park, I didn’t stay long as it was getting dark.

Royal Park, Parkville. 2018.

It was by chance the Uncle of one of the young ladies who survived such an attack, walked past Eddie, during a visit to Camp Pell to help police try identify the attacker. Upon recognising Eddie he cried out and Eddie was taken in for questioning. Eddie, confronted with much evidence, including witnesses and forensic evidence that matched mud and dirt on his pants to the site Gladys body was dumped, didn’t take long to confess. The case was given to the American military to try and Eddie was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, carried out in the Old Melbourne Goal later that year.

I finished my trip with a quick visit to the Melbourne Goal. It was after hours so I was unable to do the tour, but I had a quick look around the open courtyard inside the old Goal’s walls. It seems interesting that less than a hundred years ago prisoners still languished behind the stone walls and were hung in the courtyard. Another era, yet when you put it into perspective, it almost doesn’t seem that long ago.

Sources of information.

Shaw, Ian W. Murder at Dusk: How US soldier and smiling psychopath Eddie Leonski terrorised wartime Melbourne. Australia. Hachette, 2018. Hore,

Monique. Herald Sun, 2018. Edward Leonski hanged by US military on Australian soil in The Hangman's Journal, part IV

#murders; true crime; eddie leonski; melbourne; australia; pauline thompson; gladys hosling; ivy mcleod

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worcesterfinalperformancepr-blog · 6 years

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Eddie Leonski - “The Brownout Strangler”

Eddie Leonski was an American soldier, based in Australia during World War 2. Leonski has never been a stranger to drinking - every night, he would attend multiple bars with other soldiers, drinking away his sense, and some nights, would always be witnessed walking home with a young women.

Leonski had always had a troubled childhood - his father was abhsice to himself and his mother. To soothe and ease his mind, Leonski’s mother would sing him to sleep in her naturally high pitched voice. This has made an imprint on Leonaki’s drunken self-conscious, as he would always talk and sing in a high pitches voice while drunk.

May 3rd, 1942 - Ivy McLeod was to be Leonski’s first victim. She was found laying naked on the street, with no sign of robbery, only the marks on her neck from where she was strangled and murdered. The same fate became of Pauline Thompson and Gladys Hosking just days later.

Leonski always came back to his base drunk, and admitted to his roommate that he had killed on every occasion, yet he was refused to be believed.

Suspicions aroused about Leonski after the murder of Gladys - and soon enough, he was tried for murder. A psychiatric report didn’t deem him dangerous, just troubled - relating it back to his past. It was believed that Leonski killed while drunk, because of the soothing and high pitched voices of each of his victims - he wanted to steal their voices.

Researching this, I thought about a small performance that could be taken from his actions. Myself and Amber began ‘moulding’ each other into shapes to start the process of ideas.

Bradley Godfrey

(21/2/18)

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thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 5 years

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Eddie Leonski

In Melbourne, Victoria during the Second World War, electric lights were turned off or lowered at night to prevent aerial attacks from the Japanese. The war, which had confined itself to the Northern Hemisphere for the most part, was slowly creeping down the Pacific, and Melbourne was enjoying the subsequent influx of thousands of American soldiers stationed nearby. Many a young Aussie lady was swept off her feet by the charming, cashed-up Yankees.

But the fascination turned to fear when the lights went out and the bodies of three women were found strangled and discarded on the streets of Melbourne. Now the people of Melbourne had more than just air raids to fear – and all the evidence was pointing towards a GI being responsible for the crimes. The unknown subject was bequeathed a catchy nickname – the Brownout Strangler – to remind young women in Melbourne to stay inside when the lights turned down.

Eddie Leonski was a troubled youth who was conscripted into the military at a young age. The crimes he committed against young women in Melbourne were horrific, and at a time when Australians feared more for the safety of their country than ever before, the Brownout Strangler was reminding them that danger could come from within, as well. A thorough investigation weeded out Leonski from hundreds of American soldiers that could have been the culprit.

But it was the legal issues that really cemented Leonski as part of Australian criminal history. He was tried under American military law on Australian soil, and was executed at Pentridge Prison in Victoria with very little input from the state or Federal governments.

Ivy McLeod, Pauline Thompson and Gladys Hosking were undeserving victims of a cruel and twisted mind. Eddie Leonski is remembered now, not for being a war hero or a dedicated soldier, but for his sick and despicable acts. His body has been dug up and re-interred a number of times, undeserving of a final resting place.

Our main source this week was the cracking Murder at Dusk by Ian W. Shaw. Get it herehttps://www.booktopia.com.au/murder-at-dusk-ian-w-shaw/prod9780733640452.html?source=pla&gclid=Cj0KCQiA-JXiBRCpARIsAGqF8wUfn4ZefQfqnmx1U0HKpGXwgJjagMslepG6aixsVM7cRLCOMo4sZ9MaAkVZEALw_wcB to be seduced by his poetic descriptions of violent hangings.

To find out more about the legal complications of the case, read here https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/edward-leonski-hanged-by-us-military-on-australian-soil-in-the-hangmans-journal-part-iv/news-story/4c2807f932b105085414d0cd5dafcc62?sv=73c4900155d09b4afaa1bc84132de7f7&fbclid=IwAR12jeVJJs499-I6aDAc17VMhH8VIF0TTP6uTqoEBVghMjV3xPsFs2Ozw6Y

You can find out some general info at the light and breezy Daily Mail here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5994231/How-soldier-Eddie-Leonski-hanged-murdering-Melbourne-women-World-War-II.html?fbclid=IwAR0sei0A9qs8laLlYgAuCp_qwpeIJoK8fbtX4nmXVfUJkj_bI06dvm2AvEw

For what your English teacher would call “historical context”, head here https://www.ozatwar.com/ozatwar/eddieleonski.htm?fbclid=IwAR2YMtz4sSQKDSfx2Vr9JCxIKNyIZtFO83ZONN4DQAPxY92KdTSVzjC_8cA

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#true crime #crime #investigation #police #australia #justice #podcast #brisbane #forensic #evidence #murder #criminal

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salomedesade · 7 years

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I just watched the first episode of a show I found on Netflix, Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. It profiles Eddie Leonski, a killer I’d only heard about before in passing. He was an American soldier stationed in Australia during World War II, and strangled three women in 1942. He had also reportedly attacked a woman in America. Though his first victim was found naked, none of the women showed signs of sexual assault. The quick succession of Leonski’s murders (all victims were killed within a span of three weeks) makes him a spree killer, rather than a serial killer.

Eddie Leonski described himself as a “Jekyll and Hyde,” and people who knew him said he was a good man and a good soldier, except when he drank. The son of an abusive alcoholic father, Leonski himself became belligerent and violent when he drank, and he always drank to excess. Before each murder, he had been drinking. Like many male serial killers who target women, he was raised by a domineering mother, to the point where he was bullied as a child for being a “mama’s boy.” Reminiscent of Ed Gein (and Gein’s fictional counterpart Norman Bates), Leonski had a bizarre obsession with women’s voices, saying he killed women to “take” their voices, something a psychologist linked to an obsession with his mother. When Leonski drank, he talked in a high-pitched, feminine voice, like Ed Gein murdering women who resembled his mother, or Norman Bates dressing up as his mother before he killed. Leonski reportedly only showed agitation during questioning and his trial when his mother was mentioned, not wanting his mother to find out what he’d done.

Like Gein, Leonski attempted to plead insanity. Unlike Gein, his plea was not successful. He was ultimately ruled sane (”bad, not mad”) in an American military trial, and sentenced to death.

Contributing to Leonski’s ability to kill three women without getting caught were war-induced “brown-outs,” where streetlights in Australia were turned off or covered to hide from Japanese war planes. This decreased visibility made victims less aware of their surroundings, and stunted witness certainty. Eddie Leonski was known as the “Brownout Strangler.” A serial killer in Nazi Berlin, Paul Ogorzow, similarly used Germany’s wartime blackouts as a cover for his crimes. He murdered eight women on trains, earning him the nickname “The S-Bahn Murderer.”

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sandyhookhistory · 1 year

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“Lights Out For The Brownout Strangler ” 80 Years Ago, Today - (Monday) November 9th, 1942: (This horrifying true story is in 2 parts due to space restraints; please see the conclusion in the first comment, below; also, the entire story is on our FB page) Hold on to your seats, folks… Tonight’s story ends at the gallows in Coburg, Australia this very day 8 decades ago.. but it began (as these stories often do) in New Jersey 24 years earlier. In between was a horrifying international incident, and a savage end to three women. Private Edward J. Leonski, US Army (Army Serial No. 32007434, Pic 1) was born in Kenvil, NJ on December 12th, 1917 to a savagely alcoholic and abusive family, with a particularly overbearing mother. He ended up in the US Army on February 17th, 1941. On the other side of the world, American troops were arrving into Australia in early 1942 as the Allied buildup to take back the Pacific began. Tens of thousands of American Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines – better fed, better dressed, better equipped, better built, and above all better paid than their Australian counterparts – began flooding every inch of Australia from Sydney to the outback. Enough of them, in fact, to alter the population as 3% Yank by war’s end. With local women ensconced by the new arrivals – especially on payday – and their different ways of life, the elder Australians grew irate of the Americans and the novelty wore off fast. Tensions, shall we say, were “high.” Arriving in this tinderbox that February was Pvt. Leonski, who was stationed in Melbourne, which at the time was reducing nighttime electrical power to ‘brown out’ levels to prevent air raids. Mentally unhinged, and by this point a violent alcoholic, the stage was set for something to go wrong. And it did, three successive times. The first victim was 40 year-old Ivy Violet McLeod (Pic 2), found savagely beaten and strangled in Victoria Park on May 3rd. 31 year-old Pauline Thompson (Pic 3) went next… her strangled body was found on the 9th. By now, Melbourne was gripped in the terror of what came to be called “The Brownout Strangler.” Tensions and near panic reached fever pitch. (Concluded, Below) (at Fort Hancock, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckw3n-nNxyP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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