These murder detectives were true-crime celebrities, but things didn’t end well for some

Long before podcasts, streaming services and social influencers, the crime celebrities of the day were detectives with pork pie hats and permanent scowls.

Homicide detectives were cult heroes, pumped up by crime reporters looking for scoops and editors who knew the public devoured the tiniest scrap of information on baffling cases.

Crime fighters Fred Piggott and John Brophy.

Police force promotion was controlled by the dead hand of seniority, so even the best and brightest stayed at the same rank for decades, until others up the ladder died or retired.

Which meant murder investigators could wait years for promotion and stay in their roles for half a career.

Between the World Wars and during the Depression, Australia had gang wars, grisly murders and major manhunts, each reported in incredible detail.

The cops worked with no DNA, CCTV or phone taps, and with little interstate co-operation.

In Victoria, the star investigators were crime fighters Fred Piggott and John Brophy. Piggott was tall, lean, wore a bowler hat, had a white rose in his lapel and carried a gold-topped cane. Brophy was a short Irishman with an eye for crooks and, as we will see, for the ladies.

Piggott may have had only a grade-four education, but he spent a lifetime learning, seeing the need to embrace forensic science, studying blood splatters and insisting on photographing crime scenes.

The Murder Squad by Michael Adams.

Their success rate was so impressive they inspired the chant, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; If Piggott doesn’t get you, then Brophy must.”

Crime reporter Hugh Buggy wrote, “I have trailed after many detectives on murder cases ... and can recall none quite as astute and analytical as Fred Piggott.”

In NSW, the stars were cops “Big Bill” MacKay, Tom McRae and “Silent Bill” Prior, with McRae in particular assigned to the toughest and most publicised cases.

McRae and Brophy worked in different states, but both would be undone when found in compromising situations that resulted in failed cover-ups by their respective police forces.

The status of these cops grew to the point where artist caricatures of the detectives were regularly printed in the newspapers, and their testimony rarely doubted in court.

In 1930, an accused produced 35 alibi witnesses to throw doubt on Melbourne detective Henry “The Wolf” Carey’s testimony that he saw the suspect at the crime scene. The accused was convicted without hesitation.

In a new book, The Murder Squad, author Michael Adams reopens some of Australia’s most gripping murder cases, including the Hammer Horror, the Bungendore Bones, The Human Glove and The Pyjama Girl.

Adams has long been fascinated with parts of our history that have faded (his Forgotten Australia podcast is worth a listen). He has used newspapers, books, ageing court records and police files to revisit the cases that once fascinated Australia.

These are the stories that were well known at the time but have since been forgotten, he says.

Adams takes us back to the dark, crime-filled days of the Depression. “One in three men were out of work in Sydney, there was the growing influence of the Fascist New Guard and in NSW there was a real chance of civil war.”

There was a morbid curiosity with true crime, with “people such as Tom McRae becoming household names”.

Tom McRae (left) talks to a man at a Sydney hotel in 1933.Credit: National Library of Australia

McRae and Piggott (known as Melbourne’s Sherlock Holmes) were old-school cops who shared a trait that makes great investigators: curiosity. They worked on hard evidence and embraced the early days of forensics, such as crime-scene analysis, dental records and fingerprints.

They were the days of typed records of interviews, and usually only three in the room: the detective asking the questions; the police corroborator; and the suspect. Lawyers weren’t welcome.

It would have been easy to fake a confession and, as the police were rarely doubted, the phoney evidence would have, in most cases, been accepted.

Adams says while there were some dubious cases, it seems that most times murder police “played with a straight bat”.

‘They had to deal with some horrible sights and were just expected to get on with it, bucking up at the pub. Most of them died young.’

Michael Adams, author of The Murder Squad

Such as when one offender confessed to a murder but denied a similar one. Police recorded the denial, and it was admitted into evidence.

However, the lack of modern, independent forensic evidence led to a massive reliance on the expertise (and ethics) of individual investigators, with at times fatal consequences.

Adams says the police had a great tool of persuasion: the death penalty. “They could convince some to plead guilty to manslaughter because you would not be hanged,” he says.

Adams observes that police were not offered any counselling and that many of the investigators likely suffered from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Detective Willis of Sydney and Detective Munro of Albury search for clues in the Pyjama Girl case.

“They had to deal with some horrible sights and were just expected to get on with it, bucking up at the pub. Most of them died young.”

McRae started investigating murders in the early 1920s and was homicide squad chief from 1934 until his world came crashing down.

A portrait of Linda Agostini.

One of his most famous and bizarre cases was The Pyjama Girl, which began in September 1934 when the partially burnt body of a woman was discovered by a farmer walking his bull near Albury.

The victim was wearing imported yellow pyjamas, made in China, that included a white silk dragon.

The body was at first preserved on ice and later in a formaldehyde bath for eight years, allowing thousands of people, some wanting to help in the identification and others who wanted a ghoulish day out, to view the body.

McRae was assigned other cases, but eventually he was on the trail, chasing down hundreds of missing women at a time when many wives did not have their own bank accounts.

Police went as far as to check on women in the target age who had not voted in recent elections. Fingerprints and dental records failed to assist and so newspapers and the public looked to their star detective with the Truth newspaper reporting McRae was given a “roving commission” to complete “lone hand enquiries unhampered by instructions. He will be able to go where he likes in the pursuit of the new trail and all police facilities, such as fast motor transport, will be at his complete disposal”.

Antonio Agostini.

It would not be McRae who “solved” the case but “Big Bill” MacKay, who was by this time commissioner.

One of many missing women nominated as the Pyjama Girl was Linda Agostini, who was last seen in Melbourne. Her husband, Antonio, viewed the body and declared it wasn’t her. Friends and family also said it wasn’t Linda. Dental records also ruled her out.

This didn’t stop MacKay, who – seeing Antonio working in a Sydney restaurant – suspected he was the guilty party.

In 1944, he invited Antonio to a police station and, surprise, surprise, the brand-new suspect couldn’t wait to confess 10 years after the crime.

Bill MacKay, who became commissioner, solved the Pyjama Girl case.Credit: National Library of Australia

“Agostini said that on August 26, 1934, at their home in Carlton, Melbourne Linda had threatened him with a gun. There had been a struggle. She had been shot and died. Agostini panicked and decided to dump her. Trying to move Linda, he had lost a grip on her body and she’d bumped down some stairs, which had led to her head injuries. He’d then dumped her in Albury,” writes Adams.

Adams believes Agostini killed his wife but that she wasn’t the Pyjama Girl. “According to historian Richard Evans, Linda’s eyes were a different colour to the Pyjama Girl’s,” he says.

The next scandal was Agostini was not convicted of murder, but manslaughter, and served only four years before being deported to Italy. The judge appeared to place much of the blame with the victim, saying Agostini was “provoked to the limits of your endurance”.

One of the cases that fascinated Melbourne was the Gun Alley murder. After an investigation by Piggott and Brophy into the December 1921 rape and murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke, Colin Campbell was convicted and hanged for her murder in April the following year.

A key piece of evidence was hairs found on Campbell’s rug that were identified as belonging to the victim.

The last photograph of Colin Campbell Ross, taken in Melbourne Gaol in 1922.

A reinvestigation found they weren’t a match, and in May 2008, then governor David de Kretser signed a posthumous pardon for Ross.

Fourteen years after the innocent Campbell was hanged, Brophy, by then the superintendent in charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), was shot three times while parked in a car in Royal Park with two women.

The truth was covered up, with chief commissioner Sir Thomas Blamey claiming that Brophy had accidentally shot himself with his own revolver, then that he had been shot “by bandits” while meeting an informer about hold-ups. The scandal resulted in a royal commission and Blamey’s forced resignation.

In Sydney, three years after Piggott was disgraced, McRae was also brought down by trouser action when he was “found” by enraged husband Tom Caesar with his Caesar’s wife, Freda, in a hotel opposite CIB headquarters.

The subsequent salacious divorce proceedings led to McRae’s dismissal, an appeal, a recommendation he should be reinstated that was ignored by cabinet, and a police cover-up. While adultery was not a criminal offence, Adams says McRae’s career was destroyed by the controversy.

Later Freda admitted McRae had been set up. He spent the rest of his life fighting and failing to clear his name.

The Murder Squad by Michael Adams, Affirm Press, RRP $34.99.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.