Deadline: The forgotten Melbourne cold case murder of the 1970s

While there’s been a breakthrough in the 1977 Easey St killings, another terrible — and more low profile — crime of that era is being remembered this week.

Progress has finally been made on the infamous 1977 Easey St cold case, but a less high-profile case will be remembered this week.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest crime buzz.

Requiem for Julie Garciacelay

While the justice system creaks into gear to bring Perry Kouroumblis back to Melbourne to face proceedings over the Easey St murders of 1977, another terrible crime of that era is being remembered this week.

That is the abduction and murder of young Californian Julie Garciacelay, who disappeared from her sister’s North Melbourne flat 18 months before Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were murdered at their house in Easey St, Collingwood.

A memorial service for the 19-year-old will be held at St John’s Lutheran Church in Southbank — and live streamed to her frail 92-year-old mother in northern California.

A plaque will also be unveiled and a tree planted in Julie’s memory, a tribute organised by Melbourne-based founder and head of The Missed Foundation, Loren O’Keeffe.

Julie Garciacelay disappeared from her sister’s North Melbourne flat shortly before Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were murdered in their Easey St house.

For five decades Ruth Garciacelay has endured the anguish of not knowing exactly how her daughter died or where her body was hidden. Now she faces the overwhelming reality that she will die without ever resolving the crime.

Julie’s disappearance on July 1, 1975, has for decades been indirectly linked to the Easey St case through the coincidence that one of the last people to see her alive was a crime reporter who also happened to be in the house next door to 147 Easey St when Susan and Suzanne were killed there in January 1977.

That reporter is not under any suspicion in either case. He was simply twice unlucky, the first time being when he visited the Garciacelay sisters’ Canning St flat with two other men — former boxer Rhys “Tommy” Collins and violent criminal John Joseph Power.

Boxer Rhys “Tommy” Collins was one of two men who visited the Garciacelay sisters’ Canning St flat.

Power was never charged over Julie Garciacelay’s disappearance but would later do almost 30 years prison for crimes of violence and the rape of another 19-year-old woman — and he had been acquitted of murdering a woman in 1972.

Police interviewed Power in prison about Julie Garciacelay in 2003 but he told them nothing and was excused from further questioning on grounds of supposed mental impairment — but he lived until 2012 and did not seem impaired to those who saw him.

In 2018, a Melbourne coroner formally confirmed the inevitable conclusion that Julie Garciacelay’s death was a homicide.

The coroner did not name Power as the killer but the evidence, and his violent record, made him an overwhelmingly obvious candidate.

Violent criminal John Joseph Power.

The accepted facts are that crime reporter John Grant drove Tommy Collins home to Rosanna that night before dropping Power back to the city. It seems likely that Power returned to the flat and attacked Julie Garciacelay.

The men told police that, earlier that night, Julie had gone outside to a telephone box to make a call and had never returned, so they had left. This version does not quite tally with some known details.

Julie’s older sister Gail was staying with friends in Kew that night and discovered bloodstains and her sister’s torn clothing the next day. She would later return to California, shattered that she had indirectly caused her sister’s death, a loss from which she never recovered.

Gail is now dead, as is a third sister, leaving their mother Ruth to live out what’s left of a long, sad life in the hope of finding out where Julie’s remains are.

Loren O’Keeffe founded Missed in 2013 after her brother Dan went missing in July 2011. She flew to the United States this week and will be with Ruth Garciacelay when the service is live streamed from the Southbank chapel from 9am on Friday.

Bikie nights

Some interesting scuttlebutt is doing the rounds about a nasty assault in a popular Melbourne nightspot.

Talk is that the young alleged offenders had been a big problem at the venue not long before an attack which left a victim in intensive care.

At least one of them flashed bikie gang insignia hidden under outer garments to anyone they thought needed to see it.

When another bloke accidentally bumped into one of them, he was followed into a toilet and menaced with a meat cleaver.

Deadline has been told a victim of their behaviour later visited another club and told the security staff there, who contacted the first club to warn them. But it appears no action was taken.

A punter was badly injured not long afterwards, allegedly by the same fellows.

And there’s a footnote to the saga. We’re told that one of the offenders is a step-relative of an infamous Melbourne bikie doing a long prison stretch.

It seems that they have been reunited down at the big house after police made some moves of their own a little while back.

He landed on his feet

Fine work from our corrections people who recently saw a man accused of a high-profile murder about to take a nasty fall.

Prison sources say the officers were able to stop this fellow from landing on his head and suffering potentially fatal injuries.

Instead, he landed feet first. While unlikely to be sprinting laps of the exercise yard any time soon, he’s still with us.

It would have been a shame if the injured party hadn’t got his day in court to answer accusations of heinous crimes against an innocent young woman.

Is Don, is good! Not

It was revealed on the weekend that a convicted killer had been welcomed into the Essendon rooms after a game earlier this season.

The episode caused some heartburn about integrity within the code and at the club, which doesn’t really need it at the moment.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton did a good job of looking comfortable with the questioning when asked about it at a Saturday press conference.

You wouldn’t have known he’s a lifelong Essendon fan who has a Bombers mug on his desk.