What Eddie had no way of knowing was the amount of work that his army had done in the background to make certain that his death went according to a predetermined process. Finally, when Father Hannan called in to visit Eddie on Saturday afternoon, he had another priest with him, Father Tom Shanahan, who had been flown down from Brisbane by the US Army.

Later in the morning, he was visited by a US Army medical officer, who gave him a general examination, finishing it off by taking exact measurements of Eddie's height and weight, checking several times that the latter was exactly 175 pounds (79 kilograms). RRP $32.99.Īfter the Warrant of Execution was read to Eddie Leonski in his cell on the Friday evening, he is supposed to have said, 'I hope they get it over and done with in a hurry so I won't have to go on like this.' Any doubts he may have harboured about a long, drawn-out process would have been laid to rest on the Saturday morning when his guards were increased from two to their original complement of six. This is an edited extract from Murder at Dusk by Ian W. Shaw has now written a book about the Brownout Strangler called Murder At Dusk. His remains were moved again to Manson Park Cemetery in Ipswich, Queensland, at the end of the war then one last time to the Post Cemetery at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu.Īuthor Ian W. His body was first buried at Springvale Cemetery, then on Melbourne's south-eastern outskirts but was reinterred a month later in the American servicemen's section of the same cemetery. Leonski was executed at Pentridge on November 9, 1942. Leonski, who never properly explained a motive for his crimes, said of his second victim Thompson: 'She told me I had a baby face but I was wicked underneath.'īorn in New Jersey, Leonski had grown up in an alcoholic and abusive family in which one brother was committed to a lunatic asylum. One psychologist found that Leonski's crimes were motivated by hatred of his mother, who had been overprotective and controlling, but he was ruled sane. Serial killer Eddie Leonski offered no proper motive for murdering three Melbourne women