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Leonski,
Edward Joseph
(age: 24 / White) US Military - Pentridge Gaol
Murder –
victims:
Mrs. Ivy
Violet McLeod – committed on or about 3 May 1942
Mrs.
Pauline Thompson – committed on or about 9 May 1942
Miss
Gladys Lilian Hosking – committed on 18 or 19 May 1942
Sentenced
on 17 July 1942
Private
Edward Joseph Leonski of the United States Army, a heavy drinker, raped
and strangled to death with his own hands three women in Melbourne:
about 3 May 1942, he killed 40-year-old Mrs. Ivy Violet McLeod, about 9
May 31-year-old Mrs. Pauline Thompson, and on about 18 May 41-year-old
Miss Gladys Lilian Hosking. He was arrested on 22 May, was tried by an
American Court Martial and sentenced to death for triple murder on 17
July 1942. It was the first and only time that the citizen of another
country was tried and sentenced to death in Australia under the law of
his own country. Leonski expressed himself to be lucky with his death
sentence. In spite of this, he was declared sane, and was hanged at
Pentridge Gaol on 9 November 1942.
Edward
Joseph Leonski
A self-described "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Leonski was a U.S. Army private stationed in Australia during World War II, convicted and sentenced to die for strangling three women in Melbourne.
The first victim was Ivy McLeod, found dead on the night of May 2, 1942, after leaving a tavern for home. A week later, Pauline Thompson was murdered in similar fashion, with Gladys Hosking joining the list on May 28. A fourth woman was also accosted, but the killer unaccountably left her alone when she threatened to call the police.
Suspicion focused on American servicemen after an Australian sentry reported sighting a GI in blood-stained clothing on May 28. Troops in Melbourne were assembled on parade, for an inspection, and the sentry picked Leonski from the lineup. Under questioning, the stocky Texan made a full confession, telling his interrogators of a twisted fascination with the female voice. "That's why I choked those ladies," he explained. "It was to get their voices." Pauline Thompson had sung for Leonski on their last date, and he recalled that "Her voice was sweet and soft, and I could feel myself going mad about it."
Dubbed the "Singing Strangler" in the press, Leonski filed a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Convicted at his court martial and sentenced to die for his crimes, the defendant was hanged on November 9, 1942.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia
of Modern Serial Killers
Edward
Joseph Leonski
(12 December 1918 - 9 November 1942) was a serial killer who committed
his crimes in Australia, although Leonski himself was American.
Leonski is known as
the "Brownout Strangler", given Melbourne's wartime status of keeping
low lighting (not as stringent as a wartime blackout).
Early life
Born in New
York, Leonski grew up in an abusive, alcoholic family, and one
of his brothers was committed to a mental institution.He was called up for the US Army in February 1941 and arrived in
Melbourne on February 2, 1942.
Murders
On May 3,
1942, Ivy Violet McLeod, 40, was found dead in Albert Park, Melbourne.
She had been beaten and strangled, and because she was found to be in
possession of her purse it was evident that robbery was not the motive.
Just six
days later, 31-year-old Pauline Thompson was strangled to death after a
night out. She was last seen in the company of a young man who was
described as having an American accent. Gladys Hosking, 40, was the next
victim, murdered on May 18 while walking late at night near Melbourne
University.
A witness
said that, on the night of the killing, a disheveled American man had
approached him asking for directions, seemingly out of breath and
covered with mud. This description matched the individual Pauline
Thompson was seen with on the night of her murder, as well as the
descriptions given by several women who had survived recent attacks.
These
survivors and other witnesses were able to pick 23-year-old Edward
Leonski out of a line-up of American servicemen who were stationed in
the city during World War 2. A Private in the 52nd Signal Battallion,
Leonski was arrested and charged with three murders.
Trial and execution
Leonski confessed to the crimes and was convicted and
sentenced to death at a United States Army general court-martial on July
17, 1942. General Douglas MacArthur confirmed the sentence on October
14, 1942 and a Board of Review upheld the findings and sentence on
October 28, 1942. General Court-Martial Order 1 promulgated Leonski's
death sentence on November 1, 1942.
In a departure from normal procedure, on November 4,
1942, MacArthur personally signed the order of execution (in future
executions, this administrative task would be entrusted to his Chief of
Staff, Richard Sutherland). Leonski was hanged at Pentridge Prison on
November 9, 1942, only the second American serviceman to be executed
during World War II.
Leonski's counsel, Ira C. Rothgerber, attempted to
win an external review, even from the U.S. Supreme Court, but was unable
to do so. Rothgerber kept the issue alive after the war, and Leonski's
case contributed to the development of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice (UCMJ).
Leonski was temporarily interred at several
cemeteries in Australia. His remains were eventually permanently
interred in Section 9, Row B, Site 8 at Schofield Barracks Post Cemetery,
in a portion of the facility reserved for general prisoners who had died
in military custody.
Fictional portrayals
The 1986
film Death of a Soldier is based on Leonski.
Wikipedia.org
Leonski, Edward Joseph (1917 - 1942)
By Peter Pierce
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Leonski, Edward Joseph
(1917-1942), soldier and murderer, was born on 12 December 1917 at
Kenvil, New Jersey, United States of America, sixth child of Russian-born
parents John Leonski, labourer, and his
wife Amelia, née Harkavitz. The family moved to East 77th Street, New
York, during Edward's infancy. Leaving junior high school in 1933, he
took a secretarial course and finished in the top 10 per cent of his
class. He held several clerical jobs before working for Gristede Bros
Inc. Superior Food Markets. When called up for military service on 17
February 1941, he left behind an unhappy family: a mother mentally
unstable, two brothers with prison records and a third in a psychiatric
hospital.
While stationed with the 52nd Signal Battalion at San
Antonio, Texas, Leonski began to drink
heavily, preferring such concoctions as whisky laced with hot peppers;
he displayed his strength by vaulting on to bar counters and walking
along them on his hands. About this time he tried to strangle a woman.
The American authorities failed to comprehend the problem that they
shipped to Australia in January 1942.
Arriving in Melbourne in February,
Leonski was quartered at Camp Pell, Royal
Park. He resumed his ferocious drinking and allegedly attempted to rape
a woman in her St Kilda flat. Drunkenness led to thirty days in the
stockade, but release was followed by another binge. On 3 May Mrs Ivy
McLeod was found murdered in the doorway of a shop next to the Bleak
House Hotel, Albert Park. Melbourne newspapers immediately dubbed it a 'Brownout
Crime'. The unpopular wartime reduction of street lighting helped
Leonski to commit two more murders
undisturbed: of Mrs Pauline Thompson outside a city boarding house on 9
May and of Mrs Gladys Hosking in Royal Park on the 18th. All three were
throttled; all were older than the killer; and, though their genitals
were exposed, none was sexually assaulted.
Efficient detective work and the evidence of a
soldier in whom Leonski had confided led to
his arrest on 22 May. Sensitive to relations with its American ally, 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. Following some dispute,
he was declared sane, and was tried and found guilty on 17 July. Fair
haired and of middle height, Leonski was
powerfully built, boyish in appearance and cheerful in demeanour. He
gave no explanation for his crimes, other than to say of one of his
victims, 'I wanted that voice. I choked her'.
Held in the city watchhouse, he corresponded with a
woman at Eltham, learned Oscar Wilde's 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and
became a communicant of the Catholic Church.
Leonski was hanged at Pentridge prison on 9 November 1942. His
remains were finally buried in a military cemetery in Honolulu. Albert
Tucker's painting, 'Memory of Leonski' (in
his 'Image of Evil' series, 1943), is privately owned;
Leonski was also the subject of a novel by
Andrew Mallon (1979) and of a feature film, Death of a Soldier
(1986).
SEX: MRACE:
W TYPE: T MOTIVE: PC-nonspecific
MO:
Alcoholic American soldier, killed women "for their voices".
