US soldier Eddie Leonski's murder spree - in wartime Australia (1942)

Edward Joseph Leonski (1917–1942) was the 6th child in a Polish-American family in New Jersey. Leonski grew up with a manic depressive mot­her and an alcoholic father, two brothers with prison records and a third in a psychiatric hospital permanently. A psychologist said Mrs Leonski had been cont­rol­ling, Mr Leonski was an absentee father and Eddie had been bullied by the children at school.

But then why was Leonski accepted in the American army in February 1941? If he was psychotic and violent, he should have been rejected on mental health grounds. If he was nonetheless accepted by the American army, he should not have been sent overseas. The American Army certainly knew what they had on their hands. This young soldier had attempted to strangle a woman in San Antonio Texas. He was caught and charged with assault.

Yet…yet… Private Leonski arrived in Melbourne in Feb 1942. Almost immediately “ferocious” drunkenness led to thirty days in the American army stockade but he eventually was allowed back on the Melbourne streets.

baby-faced Edward Joseph Leonski arrived in Melbourne in Feb 1942

Three female civilians were found murdered in Melbourne in May 1942. Ivy McLeod (aged 40) was beaten to a pulp and strangled in inner city Albert Park. Pauline Thompson (aged 31) went to the American Hospit­ality Club where she met friends for a dance. Her strangled body was found the next morning in Spring Street in the city. Gladys Hosking (aged 40) was going home from her job at Melbourne University and a few hours later her body was found near Camp Pell in inner city Park­ville. All three were throttled; all were older than the killer; and, though their genitals were exposed, none had been raped.

Several other women came forward to say that they had been attacked by an American serviceman in May 1942, but had avoided death by sheer fluke. That made Melbourne women feel even more vulnerable and afraid of walking in their own streets.

Great numbers of American servicemen at Camp Pell were lined up by the Melbourne police so that witnesses could identify the murderer. Edward Leonski of the 52nd Signal Battalion was eventually identified by some of the women who had survived Leonski’s murderous plans. Leonski was a heavy drinking, fun-loving soldier who just wanted to meet local women. But he eventually confessed to the crimes, saying he killed the women because he was fascinated with female singing voices. He soon became known as the Brownout Strangler, presumably because he could easily stalk and kill women in the shadowy streets; Melbourne kept public lighting at a low level throughout the 5.5 years of WW2.

24 year old Leonski of the 52nd Signal Battalion was arrested and charged with three murders. Although his crimes were committed on Australian soil against Aust­ralian civilians, Leonski was court marshalled by an American milit­ary court, using American military law. It was the first time that any person has ever been tried in this country by a military tribunal for a crime against civilians.

Following some dispute, he was declared sane. Nonetheless in the court case, evidence of Leonski’s alcohol-induced psychosis was given. Dual personalities, alter egos, voice changes, poltergeists, werewolves and demons were all described in detail. He personally gave no explanation for his crimes, other than to say that he wanted a woman’s voice. So he took it.. by choking each female victim.

Article re the strangulation murder of three Melbourne women.
The Truth newspaper, 18/7/1942 

(Photo credit: State Library of Victoria)

Leonski was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne in July 1942. The death sentence was signed by General Douglas MacArthur himself. A Board of Review upheld the findings in late October 1942 and Leonski was hanged at Pentridge Prison in November.

Leonski was buried in an unmarked site in a Melbourne cemetery, given that many Australian husbands wanted to grab his body and throw it to the dingoes. In May 1945, his body was removed to the USAF Cemetery in Ipswich in Queensland. In 1947, Leonski's body was sent to America where it was buried on the island of O'ahu in Hawaii.

Even back in 1942, controversy reigned. Sensitive to relations with its American ally who had so recently joined the war effort, the Curtin government decided, after consultation with Britain and in the face of some strenuous opposition, that Leonski could be tried by a United States court martial. You can read the endless newspaper debates in the then-newspaper of record in Melbourne, The Argus, on the following dates: 4th, 11th-15th, 20th-29th of May, and the 14th-15th and 17th-18th of July 1942.

But questions still remain in 2014. What was the American Army thinking, accepting a clearly disturbed young man whose goal it was to get blind drunk and strangle women? Why were no charges made under Aust­ralian law, once all the murders and attempted murders happened in Melbourne? How could the Prime Minister John Curtin allow the Americans to use a military tribunal to prosecute breaches of civil law? How did the Australian legal and penal authorities allow capital punishment for a man who, the psychiatric evidence suggested,  was not responsible for his own actions?

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There is another story to be told about Australian soldiers and American GIs fighting each other in Brisbane,  just months after American soldier Leonski had terrorised the civilian population of Melbourne. General Macarthur had made critical remarks about the fighting capacity of the Australians and the hostility between the two allied nations was intensifying. Thousands of soldiers and military police were involved in "The Battle of Brisbane" in November 1942, but since the story was suppressed from Australian newspaper and radio reports, the Brisbane events went unnoticed elsewhere. Note however that one Australian soldier was killed; 7 Australian soldiers and 11 American soldiers were very seriously wounded.