The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 12

PUB QMB flfl IMMI i EliM ft fllflTOTffilfli) ffilH TING Mi THE STEMS 7 1 HOLLYWOOD actor James Coburn flies into Melbourne this week to help reconstruct on film perhaps the most terrifying series of murders ever committed in Australia and one of the most controversial executions. Although barely remembered today, the gruesome strangling of three women in Melbourne in 1942 compares with Jack the Ripper for brutality and the community fea aroused; As the Ripper, prowled the back of London's Whitechapel, so Eddie Leonski, strangler, stalked the darkened streets of Melbourne during the wartime V. But the Leonski case also seriously wartime morale and at one stage even' threatened relations between Australia and its most valued ally. For the smiling, baby-faced strangler' was an By BILL Leonski struck Gladys Hosking, a 41- year-old librarian, was 'met by Leonski on her home, front; work. Her body was found on the outskirts of the US army encampment at Royal Park.

After Ithat, it wasn't difficult for a couple of tough Melbourae detec-v lives, Sergeant Sid McGuffie and Inspector Bluey Adam, to trap Leonski. i His 16-day reign of terror was over. And in Russell Street police station, the young former grocery clerk-cheerfully confessed. Wrongly hanged or not, the story of Private -32 007 434 Edward J. Leonski, 52nd Signal Battalion, is unique in Australian legal history.

Leonski became the only person to be tried under the laws of a foreign country for crimes against Australian citizens in Australia. Once convicted by a US court martial and the death sentence ratified, Leonski's execution was carried out with extraordinary haste. At 530 am on Novem-. ber 9, 1942, a van drew up outside the south gate, of Melbourne's; jail. A US military policeman leapt out, and amazed the duty warder by announcing "Bud, we want to use your gallows." Less than 20 minutes later they left carrying a stretcher bearing 25-year-old Leonski's body.

Only the prison governor" had been" fore- warned of the execution. The- rest of Australia learned of it later in a brief statement issued by the Americans. The brownout strangler had received his just deserts. American prestige had, Hn part, been salvaged. And how that prestige was needed.

At first, the American "army of occupation" had been welcomed as saviours by Australians fearful of Japanese invasion. But as time- passed, many Australians began to resent their presence. la Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, soldiers of two supposedly friendly armies brawled in streets and pubs. At his court, martial Leonski had pleaded not guilty and his defence counsel, Colonel Spencer B. Eddy (played by James Coburn in the film) argued passionately that his client was insane.

Certainly insanity and THE STRANGLER: Eddie Leonski Jamas Coburn MELLOR Ivy McLeod, 40, was Leonski's first victim strangled in a doorway as she waited for a tram. Six days later, Pauline Thompson was picked up by Leonski in a Melbourne pub and paid with her life. Neither woman had been raped. Two murders may not normally be enough to cause panic in a staid city. But these were the days of the brownout and the even more restrictive blackout Melbourne was gripped by terror.

American servicemen were looked on with fear and loathing. on May .18, American soldier in General Douglas Mac--'-Arthur's army one of 60,000 US troops stationed in Melbourne. And more than 40 years later, there remains the suspicion that Mac-Arthur ordered an insane man be wrongly sent to the gallows in a bid to heal a growing rift between Australian and US troops. Now, Australian film producer Bill Nagle is buying into the controversy with a $3.2 million movie starring Coburn and destined for worldwide distribution. In it, he will contend that rather than being declared legally sane, Eddie Leonski was suffering from a mental disorder known as lepto defender Eddy remains convinced that his client should not have hanged.

He told Australian author Ivan Chapman: "Eddie Leonski lived in a world of fantasy. He was as crazy as hell. He should never have been taken into the army." After reading the script of Bill Nagle's film, Coburn, felt the same. He told Nagle: "At last, I've been offered a film that's about something." Leonski the Brownout Stransler (Hale and Iranonger). alcoholism ran in Leonski's family.

He was a prodigious drinker and before coming to Australia had. attempted to strangle a girl in San Antonio', Texas. And despite knowing he would hang, Leonski kept joking madly to the end. Farewelling detective McGuffie in the condemned cell, Leonski wisecracked: "Well, so long Mr McGuffie If you've got any more dames you want choking, just bring 'em along and I'll fix 'em for you." Forty years later, In Security A buv DinECT mm FACTE2V ARE) meningitis and spared the death penalty. Nagle, 37, who scripted The Odd Angry Shot, will also highlight the tensions between MacArthur's troops and the war-weary Diggers who returned from the Western Desert to find their girlfriends being squired around by dashing, gum-chewing' GI's with Hollywood accents and wallets crammed with greenbacks.

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