Easey Street breakthrough raises hopes in another cold case murder mystery

Outside the building where teen murder victim Julie Garciacelay vanished from her bloodied apartment nearly 50 years ago, Loren O’Keeffe imagines how the young woman’s mother feels to be nearing the end of life with no answers.

As cold case detectives make renewed efforts to identify who killed the 19-year-old, O’Keeffe knows “it doesn’t get easier to accept over time” for those with missing loved ones.

Loren O’Keeffe, of The Missed Foundation, outside the North Melbourne building where Julie Garciacelay was last seen in 1975.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Garciacelay hasn’t been seen since July 1975 when blood and slashed underwear were found in her North Melbourne flat.

“It gets harder,” said O’Keeffe, founder of The Missed Foundation, who will this month travel to California to meet Ruth Garciacelay, Julie’s mother.

Ruth, now 92, is writing from her US home on email as illness makes long phone conversations challenging, and is still hopeful she can bring Julie’s body home for burial before she passes.

Julie Garciacelay. A coroner found in 2018 that the teen was murdered by persons unknown.

“It has been extremely difficult going through life without Julie,” she said. “Many, many times I have thought and dreamed of what job she would have chosen, what her wedding day would be like, my grandchildren, her old age [she would now be 69].”

Julie had only been in Melbourne for eight months when on a night in 1975 three men visited her at the apartment she shared with older sister Gail, who was out.

She worked as a librarian at the Southdown Press, and was visited at home that night by a crime reporter-colleague and two associates (both of whom are now dead).

The three men were the last to see Julie alive, and told police she went to make a phone call and never returned. John Grant, the then reporter for the Truth newspaper, is still alive.

Grant has repeatedly denied any involvement in Julie’s disappearance. He has previously said that he had been “to hell and back” since that night.

“We went over there for a drink and that was it,” he said at the time.

“She went away and we got tired of waiting and left … I would like to see the whole thing solved too, of course.

“Get some peace for me, for everybody.”

The case has been re-examined several times in the past five decades. In 2018, the Victorian coroner determined Julie was murdered by persons unknown. The coroner did not accuse Grant or the other two men of the murder.

Julie came to Melbourne to spend time with her homesick sister, said journalist Helen Thomas, who is preparing a six-part podcast on the murder.

Julie Garciacelay’s mother Ruth, and her sister Gail in Melbourne in 1975.

The morning after Julie vanished, Gail found a blood-soaked towel and her sister’s cut-up underwear in their flat.

“She didn’t really want to come, but she came out because she loved her big sister. They were best mates as much as anything,” said Thomas, who has uncovered information about the Garciacelay case that has not been released previously.

“The last time Julie talked to Ruth, she made it clear she’d convinced Gail to come home, and she said they’d be home for Christmas.”

Gail Garciacelay accompanied her mother to Melbourne in the 1970s to help bring attention to Julie’s case. Gail died in 2010.

Following the arrest last month of a man over the 1977 murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett in their home in Easey Street, Collingwood, Detective Senior Sergeant Tony Combridge, of the Missing Persons Squad, said those with knowledge of what happened to Julie had lived with the secret for almost five decades and “now is the time to do the right thing and come forward”.

“After so long, friendships falter and allegiances change. There may be people out there who are now in a position to come forward and speak to police to provide answers for Julie’s loved ones,” Combridge said.

Ruth Garciacelay had no contact with police for decades, until she was called by a senior officer a couple of months before the man was arrested over the Easey Street murders. That officer reassured Ruth the investigation into her daughter’s death is active.

Ruth believes people in Melbourne could still recall valuable information. “No matter that it has been [almost] 50 years, someone might recall a remembrance of what they might have seen at the time, a major or minor remembrance,” she said.

Loren O’Keeffe knows the pain of ambiguous loss that is shared by families whose loved one is missing for months or years. Her brother, Daniel, was missing for five years before his remains were found. His death was deemed to be not suspicious.

“Although I no longer live with the torment of ambiguous loss, I will never forget what that existence feels like,” she said.

“For Ruth, Julie’s absence is raw today as it was in 1975 because she hasn’t been afforded the answers she needs to properly process the grief.”

O’Keeffe is helping Ruth preserve Julie’s memory in Melbourne through a plaque to be laid at a Melbourne Lutheran church.

O’Keeffe will be with Ruth at her home to help set up livestreaming so they can watch Pastor James Winderlich lay the plaque at St John’s of Southgate and plant a tree for Julie next Friday.

Anyone with information on the case can pass it to police via Crimestoppers. To support community-funded The Missed Foundation visit the website here.

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