PAJAMA GIRL

On 1 September, 1934, the badly burnt body of a young woman, viciously battered about the head and wearing only pajamas, was found in a road culvert in the township of Albury on the New South Wales-Victoria border in rural Australia. Although Sydney police reconstructed the dead woman’s features and made composite drawings of what she may have looked like in life, they also took the extraordinary step of preserving the body in a formalin bath. 

During the next decade, tens of thousands of people viewed the ghastly remains at the University of Sydney, and later Sydney police headquarters, before it was positively identified in 1944. When the body was examined, the victim, dressed in canary yellow and white pajamas, was determined to be between 25 and 30 years old. Her head had been protected from fire damage because it was wrapped in a towel, and she had a large laceration on the forehead and a puncture mark - most likely from a small-caliber bullet  - under her right eye. Her skull was fractured on the left side, but it was not until later that a local GP located the bullet with the use of an X-ray. The fact that the woman had been shot was not revealed to the public until the inquest in 1938. 

The dead woman was identified as Linda Agostini and it was her husband, Tony Agostini, who confessed to murdering her by accident. He was found guilty of manslaughter and served three years and nine months in prison.

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