Linda Agostini
Encyclopedia
Albury, New South Wales
Albury is a major regional city in New South Wales, Australia, located on the Hume Highway on the northern side of the Murray River. It is located wholly within the boundaries of the City of Albury Local Government Area...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, in September 1934.
Life
Linda Agostini was born Florence Linda Platt in Forest HillForest Hill, London
Forest Hill is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. It situated between Dulwich and Sydenham. The area has enjoyed extensive investment since plans to extend the East London Line to Forest Hill were unveiled in 2004....
, a suburb of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, on 12 September 1905. As a teenager, Platt worked at a confectionery store in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
before travelling to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
at the age of 19 after what was rumoured to be a broken romance. Platt remained in New Zealand until 1927 when she moved to Australia to live in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. There she worked at a picture theatre in the city and lived in a boarding house on Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross
Kings Cross, New South Wales
Kings Cross is an inner-city locality of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 2 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney...
where accounts tell she entertained young, attractive men. Platt was a heavy drinker and a Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
party-goer who had difficulty adjusting to stability. Her marriage to Italian-born Antonio Agostini in a Sydney registry office during 1930 was the beginning of an unhappy marriage that would see the couple leave for Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
to remove Linda from the influence of her Sydney friends.
Discovery and initial investigation
Mrs Agostini disappeared from friends and family in late August 1934, around a week before the unidentified Pyjama Girl was found in AlburyAlbury, New South Wales
Albury is a major regional city in New South Wales, Australia, located on the Hume Highway on the northern side of the Murray River. It is located wholly within the boundaries of the City of Albury Local Government Area...
, on the New South Wales side of the border with Victoria.
The victim's body was discovered by a local man named Tom Griffith. Griffith had been leading a prize bull along the side of Howlong Road near Albury when he saw the body in a culvert
Culvert
A culvert is a device used to channel water. It may be used to allow water to pass underneath a road, railway, or embankment. Culverts can be made of many different materials; steel, polyvinyl chloride and concrete are the most common...
running under the road. Slightly concealed and badly burnt, the body would not have been visible to anybody driving by.
It soon became apparent that the body was of a petite woman in her 20s, but her identity could not be established. After the initial investigation failed to identify her, the body was taken to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
where it was put on public exhibition. She was preserved in a bath of formalin for this purpose, at the Sydney University Medical School until 1942, when it was transferred to police headquarters where it remained until 1944
Several names were suggested for the identity of the dead woman, among them Anna Philomena Morgan and Linda Agostini. Both women were missing, both bore a likeness to the Pyjama Girl and both were of the right age. However, New South Wales police satisfied themselves that neither of the missing women was the Pyjama Girl and she remained unidentified.
Contemporary belief is that Agostini was murdered around the same time as the Albury victim, and most likely in the confines of the couple’s Melbourne townhouse.
Reopening of the case
In 1944, ten years after the body had been discovered, the forensic evidence was re-examined and the dental analysisForensic Dentistry
Forensic dentistry or forensic odontology is the proper handling, examination and evaluation of dental evidence, which will be then presented in the interest of justice. The evidence that may be derived from teeth, is the age and identification of the person to whom the teeth belong...
of the victim was matched to Linda Agostini.
Tony Agostini had recently returned to Sydney after being held in internment camps at Orange
Orange, New South Wales
Orange is a city in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. It is west of the state capital, Sydney, at an altitude of . Orange has an estimated population of 39,329 and the city is a major provincial centre....
, Hay
Hay, New South Wales
Hay is a town in the western Riverina region of south western New South Wales , Australia. It is the administrative centre of Hay Shire Local Government Area and the centre of a prosperous and productive agricultural district on the wide Hay Plains....
and Loveday
Loveday, South Australia
Loveday is a settlement in the Riverland region of South Australia, located south of Barmera and near the Murray River.Administratively it is part of the Berri Barmera Council LGA. At the 2006 census, Loveday had a population of 1,071.-History:...
from 1940 to 1944. The police commissioner
Police commissioner
Commissioner is a senior rank used in many police forces and may be rendered Police Commissioner or Commissioner of Police. In some organizations, the commissioner is a political appointee, and may or may not actually be a professional police officer. In these circumstances, there is often a...
, William MacKay, who knew Agostini's husband before the war from when Tony had worked as a waiter at the restaurant that MacKay frequented, interviewed him. Noticing that Agostini seemed to be in a nervous state, MacKay asked him what had come over him. Tony Agostini then confessed to killing his wife.
In his statement, Agostini admitted that he had accidentally shot and killed his wife when they were living in Melbourne. Worried that he might be accused of murder, he had driven the body over the state border to Albury and had dumped it in the culvert. He had poured petrol over the body and set fire to it, to destroy the evidence.
The identification came just as public confidence in the New South Wales Police Force began to wane at their failure to catch the decade's most prolific killer and the circumstances under which Antonio Agostini "confessed" to killing his wife in their Melbourne townhouse are still very dubious today.
The arrest of Agostini was a sensation, as it meant that the Pyjama Girl had been identified. He was charged with murder and was extradited to Melbourne, where he was tried for murder. Surprisingly, he was acquitted of murder but found guilty of manslaughter instead, and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He was released in 1948 and deported to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where he died in 1969.
New evidence
The case might have been left there, but new evidence recently uncovered by Richard Evans, a Melbourne historian, casts doubt on the conclusion of the case. As detailed in his book The Pyjama Girl Mystery, Evans has pointed out discrepancies with the evidence. The pyjama girl had a different bust size to that of Linda Agostini and Agostini had a different shaped nose.The Pyjama Girl Case
A film entitled The Pyjama Girl Case, directed by Italian Flavio MogheriniFlavio Mogherini
Flavio Mogherini was an Italian production designer, art director and film director. His career spanned from 1947 to 1994.-External links:...
, was produced in 1977. A book written by Hugh Geddes, based on the film and bearing the same title, appeared in 1978.