By Tammy Mills
Missing librarian Julie Ann Garciacelay.
One of Melbourne's most enduring mysteries was on Wednesday declared by a coroner to be a murder case and missing persons detectives will now kick-start a review.
It was a little over a week before librarian Julie Ann Garciacelay’s 20th birthday when she disappeared from the flat she shared with her sister in Canning Street, North Melbourne, on July 1, 1975.
Police long suspected Ms Garciacelay, who had moved from California eight months earlier, was murdered and on Wednesday, State Coroner Sara Hinchey confirmed their suspicions.
“Despite there being no evidence as to the exact circumstances and cause of Ms Garciacelay’s death, her death was the result of homicide,” Ms Hinchey found.
Detectives said they will now review a case that, since the 70s, has revolved around three men - a former boxer, a violent criminal and a crime reporter - who were with the 19-year-old on the night she disappeared.
Ms Garciacelay had been working as a library reference clerk at Southdown Press on Latrobe Street and there, she spoke with Truth newspaper reporter John Grant who had come into the library with boxer Rhys “Tommy” Collins and another man.
Julie Ann's mother Ruth and sister Gail in 1975.
The trio was there, the coroner’s court was told on Wednesday, researching food and had drawn Ms Garciacelay into their idea of opening a soul food restaurant.
She didn’t like Collins, the court heard, but she was keen to meet more people so she organised a get-together at the Canning Street unit that night.
Collins and Grant came over with another man, John Joseph Powers, who had been acquitted of murdering a woman three years earlier and would later be jailed for 30 years over a shooting, armed robberies and the vicious 1992 rape of a 19-year-old.
The men said Ms Garciacelay left the flat at 10.30pm to make a call at a public phone box for her sister, Gail, who was at a friend’s in Kew and had asked her to call in sick for her on her behalf. Ms Garciacelay never came home, the men said.
The flats in Canning Street where Julie Ann lived with her sister.
Gail Garciacelay reported her sister as missing at 4pm the following day after coming home to find she had not showed up for work at Southdown Press.
She also reportedly found a blood-soaked towel and her sister’s underwear on the floor.
Police would find a piece of paper with a phone number left by Gail, and money to make the call, inside the flat, while Gail's supervisor told police they never received a phone call from her sister that night either.
The case would get stranger.
Gail Garciacelay re-enacts her finding of Julie's slashed clothing.
Two years later, Grant was drawn into another murder investigation. He was next door visiting a friend when Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were savagely stabbed in what would become the notorious Easey Street murders.
Detectives believe his links to the two murders were a horrid coincidence, with DNA clearing him of any involvement in Easey Street.
Weirder still, a psychic who was known in California for finding the body of a man strangled in Redwood City made headlines in Melbourne in 1977 when she came forward with a hand-drawn map of where she believed Ms Garciacelay’s body was hidden.
Then, in another twist, police sent copies of the teenager’s dental charts to Hong Kong after Gold Logie winner Ernie Sigley swore he met a television reporter there who was a “dead ringer” for Ms Garciacelay.
Ms Garciacelay’s sister Gail died in 2010, but her mother, Ruth, is believed to be still alive and well into her 90s.
Ruth speaks to reporters in 2003.
Ruth spoke to Melbourne reporters from her home in the States back in 2003 as part of a re-investigation.
“It is a hard thing to live with. [But] we live with it every day... We can’t give up hope and I won’t,” she said.
“Please come forward. Please help us. Tell us what you know.”
Anyone with information should phone Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential report online.