Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer (2015–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Eddie Leonski - full transcript

[narrator] Melbourne, 1942,

and a woman applies
the finishing touches to her look.

She is heading out on the town.

Amongst the men she might encounter,

GIs arriving daily from America,

and one of them

is a serial killer with a bizarre fetish.

He wants to steal the voices
of women he meets.

[Glenn] Suddenly, reading
the paper in the morning

there would be alongside news

of the latest developments in the war,
news of the latest attack upon a woman.



[narrator] Is it a New Jersey man
who's been seen lurking

in the shadows near
tram and train terminals?

Private Eddie Leonski
cuts a perplexing figure,

often drunk and bizarrely talking
in a high-pitched tone.

It was this voice, the softness
that he wanted somehow to have,

this thing that he kept emulating himself,

soothing himself with these voices.

[narrator] Three women are dead

and detectives are sure
there will be more victims,

unless they can get inside
the mind of a serial killer.

[theme music playing]

[narrator] In three May weeks,
no woman was safe

during the so-called
Melbourne brownouts of 1942.

It created a city of shadows,
of frightening corners.



[narrator] With the lights
doused or dimmed

to make life hard for Japanese bombers,

three women had been snatched, stripped,
strangled, left for dead.

Melbourne was a city at war

but the danger was from a friend at home,
not the enemy abroad.

Already known for his heavy drinking
and sexual abuse

of a woman at home in New Jersey,

Private Eddie Leonski arrived in Australia

at a time when relations
between the Allies

were not always what
the authorities wanted.

[announcer] More troops
for the American expeditionary force

in Australia.

Armed convoys winning the game
of hide-and-seek with enemy fleets.

[narrator] Rumors abounded
about GIs running off

with the wives
of Australian diggers or soldiers.

Complaints were common
of the Yanks being overpaid,

over-sexed, and over here.

[Paola] To some, the American troops

seemed exotic creatures,

Hollywood looks and accent.

Better fed and certainly better paid.

And where were the Ozzie boys?

Spilling blood on foreign soil

while these Americans
were on a cushy posting

and not even seeing action.

[narrator] Certainly when
a Melbourne girl went out on the town,

it was likely she'd meet a GI.

Mrs. Ivy Violet McLeod
went out on Saturday May 2nd.

Around 5 o'clock, she went to see a friend
with whom she stayed until 8:00.

After that, she headed into the city

where she was seen by witnesses wearing
a black dress with a lacy neckline.

Ivy knew the area well.

She'd worked there as
a waitress in a cafe.

Court transcripts from the day
reveal that by 11 o'clock,

Ivy was in the home
of an aircraft mechanic

that she had known for seven months
called John Patrick Thompson.

He knew her as Ivy Darvagel,

the maiden name that she'd used
when out with him.

He didn't know she was married.

The couple intended to start
a new life in New South Wales.

As they made plans, dreamed of a new life,

Eddie Leonski tried to forget his.

[Glenn] The appalling things that
Leonski had suffered as a child

were all locked up in his psyche.

And he was a very troubled man,
not even drink would help him.

The one source of comfort to him

was his mother and he was
missing her rather badly.

[narrator] Meanwhile, Leonski
trawled some exotic places

as well as some classic wartime bars

where he liked to listen to women singing

and stayed late to do just that.

[Linda] One of the most
interesting features

of Eddie Leonski's story

is his relationship with the female voice.

He himself would sing
with a very high-pitched female voice.

You've got to image, this is like
a burly American soldier

that would emit very, very high-pitched
feminine tones.

Sounds almost eerie,

the idea of him almost trying
to self soothe in that way.

[narrator] Across the street from where
Eddie Leonski was leaving a bar,

Ivy was saying goodnight to John Thompson.

He offered to walk her
to the tram terminus,

but she insisted she should go alone.

She set off to catch the night tram
and reassured John that she'd be fine.

There were enough people about for her
to cry for help if it was needed.

It looks like from the evidence

that Ivy really wasn't worried
about walking home on her own.

She went off into the wee small hours

toward the tram and didn't really
want somebody to accompany her.

Perhaps it was because she
was a married woman,

and didn't really want
to be seen with a man.

[narrator] As she left the house
in the Albert Park area of Melbourne,

she may have caught
a glimpse of an American GI,

obviously drunk, walking away
from the Bleak House Hotel.

Or perhaps she didn't see him.

It was 2:30 a.m. in the brownout.

It wasn't easy to see friend or foe.

Australian or American.

A tram was due at 2:45 a.m.,

just 15 minutes to wait
for her ride back to East Melbourne.

Eddie Leonski approaches her,

asks if they can talk.

He likes the sound
of the voice of a woman.

At some point, she must
have become frightened.

[narrator] She has every reason to be.

The mind of the man she's about
to encounter is deeply troubled.

Private Eddie Leonski
was a larger-than-life figure

both at Camp Pell in Melbourne's
Royal Park and in the town.

He was physically well-built,
working out every day.

A striking character in the bars, too,

who enjoyed trying
to out-drink those he met.

He would get outrageously drunk.

The next day he would remember
little of what he'd done.

One of his notable traits was
to sing at an incredibly high-pitch.

Like his mother, he would say.

Alcohol and the Leonski family
did not mix well.

Indeed, there was much about the Leonskis
that few knew about.

Eddie was one of four,
two brothers and a sister,

born to immigrant parents in New Jersey.

He was considered the good one.

Eddie Leonski's dad was an alcoholic

who regularly beat up not only Eddie,
but his other two brothers as well.

So he would have grown up
in that very violent environment.

In fact, his mom tried to save herself
and her kids from it by getting a divorce.

But then, what happens,
she marries another guy

who's just as violent,
who beats up Eddie again.

So, I guess,

those initial formative years
around what his expectations were

from parental love and from father figures

would have began
with that very violent overtone.

[narrator] Perhaps, not surprisingly,
given such a tortured family background,

Eddie Leonski himself showed
two distinct personalities.

Interestingly, when Eddie was sober

he was described as a really good soldier,
a good guy, very affable and kind.

But when he drank, things changed
and when he drank, he drank to excess.

He was an obsessive
when it came to drinking.

He drank just to get drunk.

We're not talking about five or six beers.

We'd say that, at any given time,

he would sit down with 36 beers,

interspersed with other concoctions,
with various different other spirits.

So he was unable to stop once he started.

And he would make
an exhibition of himself.

He would do handstands
on the bar, I believe,

get into fights with people.

The next day he would remember nothing.

[narrator] Leonski's obsessional drinking
reveals much about the state of his mind

and about what he had inherited
and learned from his father.

If what you see around you

is an appropriate way
of coping with stress,

or tiredness, or problems
is through the use of alcohol.

An appropriate way of being able
to have fun is only when I'm drunk,

an appropriate way of being able
to have the confidence to approach a woman

is only when I'm intoxicated,
then you learn that.

And if you combine that
with a pre-disposition

to addiction and alcoholism

then you have a recipe for disaster.

[narrator] Eddie had been bullied
in his native New Jersey when a child,

and taunted for being a mother's boy.

Leonski's mother was heard by neighbors
singing the teenage Leonski to sleep,

perhaps explaining his other obsession,

the sound of a woman's voice.

[Linda] Eddie would have seen this
almost continuum from an idealized mother

with a soft, sweet voice

that would be there to save him

and then a very, very aggressive father
that he had to hide from.

[narrator] Alongside the violence
engrained in his home life,

another ingredient was
added to the cocktail

that made up the mind
of the heavy-drinking Eddie Leonski.

All soldiers in wartime
are trained to kill.

[guns firing]

The American GIs with Eddie Leonski
were in Australia.

They hadn't seen action yet,
but they were en route to South Pacific.

Eddie Leonski knew how to kill.

[narrator] Nobody in Australia or America

truly has the full picture
of Eddie Leonski

as he steps out eventually
to meet Ivy McLeod.

That he could kill is clear,

that he loses control when drunk
is obvious to all,

that he has a bizarre fetish
about women, nobody knows.

What will happen when
all three factors come together?

May 2 was a Saturday
and it was the night off for the men.

Leonski and his other 15,000 GIs
in Camp Pell were sleeping two to a tent.

They had to get out.

So they went off into the bars
and the pubs of the city to go drinking.

[Glenn] They headed for a bar

in Beaconsfield Parade
near the Melbourne waterfront.

[Paola] They were drinking whiskey
and it is very likely

that Leonski was drinking for each whiskey

a beer, a beer chaser.

[people chattering indistinctly]

[narrator] So, in murky,
war-time Melbourne,

a trained killer who lost control
of his actions when drunk,

which he was every night,

and with a deeply unsettling range
of psychiatric issues,

was walking the streets.

Late autumn was not a good time

to be a woman out alone,

which Ivy McLeod was,
in the brownout too.

As his day had passed,
Leonski, true to form,

had become more and more drunk.

Witnesses saw him run out of money,

borrow some from fellow soldiers,

spend it on drink
and then go find another bar.

He had spotted Ivy as he walked
from one of his many bars.

As she considered heading home
to East Melbourne,

she was oblivious to the danger

presented by the tortured mind
of Private Eddie Leonski.

Eddie Leonski spoke to Ivy McLeod

sometime between 2:30 and 2:50 a.m.
of May 3rd.

Hours later, a grim discovery.

Just before light on May the 3rd,

a barman at the Bleak House Hotel,

where Leonski had almost
certainly been drinking,

bent down to pick up
something from the floor.

Opposite the hotel, he looked across

and thought what he saw was
a shop mannequin.

Then he saw an American GI walking away.

So he went over to the doorway
to take a closer look.

It was a dead body and I think

that's where the nightmare

that Australians are waking up to
really begins.

Ivy was found naked,
her clothes strewn around everywhere,

and was only wearing her belt,

presumably because he couldn't get it off
or didn't want to.

[narrator] A barman, Harold Gibson,
rang the police

from inside the hotel.

He picked up two bags

and covered Ivy's body
to protect her modesty.

People were beginning to set off for work.

He didn't want them to see the body.

So, was it Leonski?

He'd been drinking
that day and that night.

But, there was no record at that point
of him ever attacking anybody.

And it wasn't even really clear
that there'd been a murder.

[narrator] No records of attacks
on women in Australia maybe,

but American GIs had
all sorts of backgrounds

that the Australian authorities
knew nothing about.

Leonski had in fact almost been
thrown out of the US army

for assaulting a woman in America.

Though naked, an autopsy revealed that
Ivy had not been sexually assaulted.

Detectives assumed murder
but at first couldn't be certain.

As for the American military authorities,

on hearing the report of the witness,
they simply refused to cooperate.

How, in the brownout, could anybody see

what nation's uniform the soldier seen
running from the scene was wearing?

It was an absolute mystery.

At that point, nobody suspected

or even thought
of suspecting Eddie Leonski.

The first person who went to talk
to the police was John Thompson.

But, in actual fact, the way they made it
sound was as if he was a suspect.

But he'd been asleep all night

and he didn't even know about the murder

until his landlady told him
the next morning.

[narrator] The police had found evidence
in Ivy's purse

that lead them to discover her identity.

They released the information

and the man she had spent
that Saturday evening with

contacted the police to tell them
everything he knew.

Another witness came forward saying

that she had been approached
by an American soldier that same evening.

He'd asked her to go skating.
She had refused.

Upon which, amazingly,
the solider simply said she was lucky.

He'd planned on killing somebody
that night.

Australian detectives had heard enough

to suspect an American soldier
was involved in the death of Ivy McLeod.

A few days later,

medical investigators confirmed that
Ivy had indeed been murdered.

Her skull had been fractured
probably whilst she was being strangled.

[Paola] Melbourne had a murderer
on the loose

and the evidence suggested
that it was an American soldier.

Now, remember in those days,
there was no DNA evidence,

there were no CCTV cameras

and they certainly didn't collect evidence
in the forensic way that we do today,

and add that to the fact there were
15,000 American soldiers in the city.

[narrator] And the American officers
in charge were not in a hurry to help

the Victoria Authorities,

which meant that
the full story of the murders

of the three Australians in 1942
has only recently come to light.

Court documents, now digitized,

tell how Leonski was allowed
to walk freely around Melbourne

even though he had actually confessed
to strangling a woman,

when talking to a fellow GI.

Later, some Australians would point
to that incident

as evidence that
some American soldiers simply thought

they could get away with murder.

Private Anthony Gallo
of the 52nd Battalion saw Leonski

drunk outside the tent that
they both shared on May 9th.

Leonski said to him,
"I killed, Gallo, I killed."

Gallo already knew Leonski was capable
of violence when drunk.

So, Eddie kills
and he's actually very shaken about this

because he goes back to his barracks,

wakes up a fellow soldier and confesses
and says, "This is what I have done."

Gallo doesn't believe him and thinks,

"Okay, go back to sleep,
this is ridiculous."

But actually, this really had happened,

and I think, he, to some extent,

may have been as surprised
about what happened.

He must have been coming down
from what happened and needed to speak.

Amazingly, he confessed.

But if he was the killer,
he didn't convince his fellow American GI.

Private Gallo heard his confession,
but he told nobody.

[narrator] Meanwhile,
in bars and cafes across town,

there were murmurings aplenty

of where Ivy McLeod's killer
had come from. America.

And everybody knew what would be happening
on a Saturday night in Melbourne.

Lots of Americans would be out
getting drunk

and lots of Australian girls
would be on the town with them.

Including Pauline Thompson,

who told her policeman husband
that she was going to a dance

at the Music Lover's Club in Melbourne.

Pauline, who had three children,

worked part time as a receptionist
at the Melbourne radio station, 3AW,

and was planning a night out
with the girls that she worked alongside.

If asked, she would be
giving her maiden name, O'Brien.

During times of war, we know that,
perhaps because death is so close

in everyone's mind,

that people are much more open to intimacy
and human connections,

so we know that
extra marital affairs soar.

And this night, Pauline was looking
for that human connection.

Her husband was away and she had arranged
to meet up with a GI

and just basically, just have a good time.

[narrator] Eddie Leonski was about
to confront another woman

alone in brownout Melbourne.

And he would again be drunk

and in search of the sound
of a woman's voice.

Pauline Thompson was planning
on meeting an American GI

before going on to a dance club
in Melbourne.

But he was so late,
she went on to the Astoria Hotel bar.

There, she was seen
with an American soldier,

described as well-built.

This was classic
young woman out on the town stuff.

There was singing,
there was dancing, there was partying.

She loved gin and orange,
loved gin and orange.

It was wartime, tensions were high,
and inhibitions were low.

[narrator] Pauline and her American GI

made an impressive couple
as they sampled Melbourne's nightlife.

Though she was from Bendigo,
a three-hour train journey north,

Pauline lived
in a Melbourne apartment house.

Pauline Thompson was to die
that night, May 9th.

Her body was discovered on the steep steps
outside of her home the following morning.

It was precisely a week

since the discovery
of the body of Ivy McLeod.

She, like Pauline, had been strangled.

This second murder really struck terror
into the community.

It was revealed
that the victim had been seen

in the company of an American soldier

and she had been stripped of her clothes
and she'd been strangled.

Did Melbourne have a serial killer
on its hands?

It appeared that this killer might well be
an American.

This really wasn't good for relations
between the Americans and the Australians.

They had been trying to build bridges
between them.

For a little while,
the ANZACs were known as the Yankzacs,

and then the story breaks.

[narrator] Police quickly announced that
they were keeping an open mind

about who the killer might be.

They went on record to say
that they believed

either Mrs. Thompson was throttled
by a stranger

after she left the soldier
to go to her apartment,

or by a man whom she may have known,

or simply, someone waiting
in the darkness near to her home.

They were sure that she was murdered
on the steps outside her front door,

but they were sure of little else.

The Americans themselves

were not about to go hunting through
a camp of 15,000 soldiers

with limited evidence,

and so were rather reluctant
to help the local police.

[narrator] Two women were dead,
but there were no suspects.

How would Leonski have been feeling?

What was going on inside the mind
of Eddie Leonski?

Again, he told his cellmate
he had killed.

Another confession, but why?

[Linda] Whether a killer
wants to confess or not varies.

For some,
they confess for narcissistic reasons.

For others, they want to confess
because it's too big.

It's something that they can't control,
yet for others,

keeping it secret is a means of control,

not just safety,
but control or even reliving it.

I think, in this case with Eddie,
the confession was probably because

he was literally sobering up
to what he had done.

Literally and metaphorically,
he saw in the light of day

that he had taken this young woman's life.

[narrator] The confession reveals a man
at war with himself.

[Linda] One of the things that
he often described was

this Jekyll and Hyde character.
He saw this in himself.

He saw the light and the dark.

He saw himself when he was drinking,
when he wasn't drinking.

When he was violently aroused,
when he wasn't.

[narrator] Leonski's confession
fell on deaf ears.

Is there a suspicion of a cover-up?

I don't think it was a cover up,

but I do believe in retrospect that

if it had been two American women
who had been killed,

Private Gallo's evidence,
Private Gallo's story of the confession

would have been passed on
and more would have been made of it.

[narrator] Instead,
nothing was done or said

and Leonski went about his business
as usual.

The investigating detectives
asked for cooperation

from their American colleagues
in the military police

and were allowed to take witnesses
to Camp Pell,

who watched soldiers march past.

They were hoping to see
if anybody could be picked out.

But nobody recognized anybody

who had been with either woman
on the night they were killed.

So Eddie Leonski was basically allowed
to go about his business.

And for him, that just meant getting
more and more drunk,

day after day, night after night.

[narrator] Which puts Gladys Hosking,
a 40-year-old from Perth,

now living in Melbourne

and working at
the university's chemistry department,

in grave danger one evening in May.

Her father had received a letter from her

saying she was nervous about walking alone
at night in the city

and always tried to travel
with a companion.

[Paola] By the third week in May,

women were really frightened
of going out at night.

The local paper, The Melbourne Argus
described it as a panic.

[narrator] But Gladys, nervous or not,
often found herself out at night.

Keen on amateur dramatics
and ballet dancing,

she would regularly scamper
across the city to meet up with people.

On the 17th of May, a rainy evening,

she left work walking with a friend
under an umbrella.

A short time later, she had dinner
somewhere in the area of the Royal Park,

where Camp Pell was based,
and not far from where she lived.

Gladys was seen later
still walking under an umbrella.

The person holding it was an American GI.

And the witness said

there was something protective
about the way the umbrella was being held.

[narrator] The witness
was Private Malcolm K. Walsh,

a military policeman.

It appeared that Gladys
was not especially in danger.

There had been a couple of murders,

but there had been
a couple of thousand dates

between American soldiers and local women

on the same night.

And so the MP saw nothing especially
to worry about.

[narrator] Gladys walked away
from Private Walsh

and into the darkness of the brownout.

It was May 17th,
14 days since the murder of Ivy McLeod

and nine days since the discovery
of Pauline Thompson's body.

Both women had been walking alone
in the darkness late at night.

Both had been seen in the company
of a handsome American soldier.

Both were dead.

What fate awaited Gladys?

Melbourne was experiencing a wet
and windy May in 1942

and the arrival of thousands of soldiers
to the Royal Park

had left the area very muddy.

In the early hours of the 18th,

Eddie Leonski was stopped
by an Australian soldier

who was guarding military equipment.

The guard couldn't help but notice that
he was covered in mud, head to toe.

Then Leonski asked him for directions
back to Camp Pell Area One.

He seemed drunk, agitated, almost frantic.

He was crying and speaking
in an unworldly high-pitched voice.

[narrator] The voice he reverted to
when he was drunk is telling.

Leonski was a man hugely influenced
by an over-protective mother

who sang him to sleep
to soothe his anxiety

in the face of a drunken, violent, father.

He was obsessed with women's voices.

And on that night, he was talking
to people using a woman's voice.

[Paola] When he eventually got back
to his area,

a guard told him to go and wash himself,
he was so dirty.

He told his tent mate that
he had fallen in mud.

[narrator] Private Marcel A. Jasinski
of Company B

of the 52nd Signal Battalion
of the US Army

was stationed at Camp Pell
along with Leonski.

He remembered seeing Leonski
entering the latrine

and asking,
"Where the hell have you been?"

"He just looked as if he was in a daze,"
he told friends.

On the other side of the park,

a gruesome discovery was about to be made.

Gladys Hosking was found dead,
strangled with her clothes torn about her,

in a muddy trench just 350 yards
from her home and adjacent to the park.

By her body, an umbrella inside of which
was the local Melbourne Herald

and a copy of that month's Women's Weekly.

Her features were almost unrecognizable
because of the mud which covered her face.

Whoever had killed her
also had to be covered in mud.

There was no way that Leonski could not be
connected with Gladys Hosking's murder.

He was seen covered in mud.

She was found covered in mud.

He'd been seen walking the park,
her body was found in the park.

He was an American soldier

and she'd been seen
walking with an American soldier.

[narrator] And when Private Gallo heard
the news about the latest murder,

there was immediate realization

that his tent mate perhaps had not been
fooling around

when he had said he had killed women.

He reported what he knew to his superiors.

They, along with Melbourne detectives,

turned all of their resources
to Private Eddie Leonski.

They searched his tent.

Inside, they found a Melbourne newspaper
from May 5th,

two days
after Ivy McLeod had been killed.

The paper was open on the page that
the article about her death was featured.

Another newspaper was found, open again,

at a story about the death
of Pauline Thompson.

Once Leonski had killed the third time,

the case firmed up
very, very quickly against him.

As soon as it was put to him
that he was a killer,

Leonski put his hands up and said yes.

He confessed immediately.
It was almost as if it was a relief.

And this isn't necessarily the case
for many people in this situation.

For a lot of people, there is a sense of,
"I need to hide it, I'm embarrassed,

I'm ashamed, it wasn't me."
Nothing like this.

Eddie wanted to say what had happened.
In fact, he wanted to explain.

[narrator] Ivy McLeod, Pauline Thompson
and Gladys Hosking

had indeed been strangled by Leonski

who had appeared to all of the women

as an amiable American
before becoming an assassin.

The confession, and a huge amount
of evidence quickly unearthed,

meant that a conviction was inevitable.

But there were still many questions.

[Paola] Firstly, there was
the very important point,

should he be tried
in an Australian civil court

or should he be tried
in an American military court?

And of course,
there was this very pressing question

about whether or not Leonski was sane

and he could be tried as a sane person.

The system was in unchartered territory.

The politicians wanted the case
tried in local civil courts,

but this was a soldier
under the jurisdiction of a foreign power,

albeit an ally.

[narrator] General MacArthur himself,

leader of the joint services command
in the South Pacific, became involved.

There was a real threat

that anti-American feelings
could get out of hand.

He wanted Leonski tried by Americans,

convicted by Americans

and almost certainly
executed by Americans.

The Australian authorities gave way,

still the only time
a killer on Australian soil

has not been tried by an Australian court.

It's not possible to consider this case
without also considering world events.

At this point, Ivy, Pauline
and Gladys are part of a bigger story,

Melbourne part of a theater of war.

Leonski is a man few want to hang around,

is the Brownout Killer expendable?

This was a problem
that MacArthur just didn't need.

The push against the Japanese had begun.

Air raids were planned against Timor,
about 600 miles north of Darwin.

ANZACs and Americans were fighting
side-by-side

as the push against Burma
was being planned.

It was clear that this was something
MacArthur just did not need.

[narrator] Leonski had one chance.

A young counsel who would go on
to be a major figure

in United States legal
and political circles

was appointed to defend Leonski.

Ira C. Rothgerber
would go on to distinguish himself

as a tough Denver lawyer

and to work for President John F. Kennedy.

He was no shrinking violet.

[Paola] This was this young man's first
major defense case

and the person he was defending
was facing the death penalty.

It wasn't going to be a speedy trial.

He was going to take his time
and he was going to be tenacious.

Because of this question of his sanity,

Leonski is seen by a psychiatrist
in Melbourne

who actually goes on to say that
he found him very friendly

and actually in quite a good mood.

Didn't, in fact,
think he had any issues around sanity,

that he was very sane,

and in fact made the point that

it was only when his mother was mentioned

that he began to seem agitated,

as if the biggest issue for Eddie

was that his mom didn't find out
he had done something bad.

That was the most important thing for him.

Which then begs the question,

if he was being seen
by a psychiatrist today,

would the same questions have been asked?

Psychiatry and psychology have evolved
since then.

We know more, and one has to wonder

if there would have been more of
a case made about his ability

to take full responsibility
over his actions.

[narrator] Rothgerber probed and pushed
for evidence of insanity and instability.

Why would Leonski get so drunk

and lace alcoholic concoctions
with such bizarre ingredients?

Whiskey and beer with tomato ketchup,
milk, mustard and gin.

Why would he sing in a woman's voice?

Why would he talk in general conversation
using a woman's voice?

And why would he always give
the same reason for killing his victims?

So, when he goes on
to explain what happened,

for example with the first victim
who was found with the belt,

he makes a point of saying,
"I couldn't get the belt off.

Just so you understand,
it was her voice I wanted to take."

And this happens
with each and every victim.

He goes on to explain
that it was this voice,

the softness that he wanted
somehow to have,

this thing that he kept emulating himself,
soothing himself with these voices.

[narrator] Would the court-martial agree
that Leonski was insane?

If it did, it would mean
Leonski would not face the death penalty.

Rothgerber felt very passionately that

he shouldn't be held
completely accountable

that his faculties were,
in fact, compromised.

And he refers to the psychiatrist's report

and says, "Look, yes, you know
you said that he is a psychopath

but also, you have made the point that
it was because of the alcoholism,

that if given the same situations,
he could do this again.

And if that's the case,
can he, in fact, be held accountable?"

And he actually campaigns
very, very strongly

in the hopes that this soldier won't meet
the fate that was in front of him,

which was the death penalty.

[Paola] That expert conclusion
was followed by two more

and all three concurred.

They decided he was bad, not mad,

and if allowed, he would do it again.

[narrator] After the four-day trial,

the members of the court-martial required
only 40 minutes to reach a verdict.

Leonski was ordered to stand before
the President's table.

He turned to Ira Rothgerber
and asked if he could hold his hand.

The pair stood, holding hands.

One out of four of all of the jurors
believed that he was in fact insane.

[Glenn] If the court were to split down
the middle,

Leonski might escape the death penalty.

[narrator] Nobody from the families
of the murdered women

was present at the court-martial.

Such niceties were not observed
in wartime.

The President told him,

"Leonski, it is my duty to inform you
that this court, in closed session

and upon secret ballot with three-fourths
of the members present concurring,

found you guilty of all charges.

I have to inform you also
that this court,

with all of its members concurring,

sentences you to be hanged by the neck
until you are dead."

Leonski gave nothing away.

Emotionless.

[narrator] The indefatigable Rothgerber
petitioned for clemency.

He called on President Roosevelt
to commute the sentence to life in prison.

Ivy, Pauline and Gladys had been killed,
three innocents.

But what was the point of executing a man

with considerable
and very damaging issues?

Would his plea work?

This was a traumatic, life-changing moment
for Rothgerber.

He was a young, committed lawyer.

It was his first defense

and the man he was defending
could face hanging.

[narrator] News of the verdict was greeted
positively in the Australian press.

The question
of whether Leonski would live or die

would not be one answered
by America's president.

[Paola] He said this
was a military matter

and it was something
for General MacArthur to handle.

The timing for Leonski
couldn't have been worse.

A few weeks after the trial,

Americans and Australian soldiers
got involved in a firefight

in Brisbane, in a bar.

Couldn't have been worse, the timing.

An Australian was killed.

And there we go, the relationship issue
had reared its ugly head again.

[Glenn] General MacArthur
never admitted it,

but he wanted this story to end.

He was determined to stamp down
on anything

that might drive a wedge
between the Australians and the Americans.

[narrator] Leonski, the serial killer,
would not have his life spared.

MacArthur was in no mood to do anything
other than serve military priorities.

So, in the end, Eddie Leonski,
abused child, damaged man,

killer, is sacrificed
for American-Australian relations.

[announcer on radio] These are the men

who are defending
the aerial approaches to Australia.

And here's real action. Jap plane spotted.

In a matter of seconds, the anti-aircraft
crews are letting them have it.

[narrator] Leonski was moved
to Melbourne's Pentridge Prison

on November 9th, 1942.

He said so long to his jailer,

joking that he was going for a facelift
and was hanged.

But that was not the end of the story.

[Paola] The terrible deaths
of Ivy, Pauline, and Gladys

would end up
changing American law forever.

In 1951, the extraordinary work
of Ira Rothgerber

ended up creating
the Uniform Code of Military Justice,

law which is still in use today.

[narrator] Eddie Leonski was executed

within 12 weeks of being sentenced
and found guilty.

He had carried out his series of killings
in just three weeks.

The deaths of Ivy, Pauline, and Gladys
at the hands of Eddie Leonski

could have been prevented

if he hadn't been allowed
into Australia in the first place.

He had already attacked a woman
in the United States.

Ivy's tragedy was to be 15 minutes early
for her late tram ride home.

Pauline, looking forward to her new life
in New South Wales,

had been warned by her estranged husband
not to go out with GIs.

She didn't listen.

And Gladys had even told her father

how she was afraid of venturing out
into Melbourne after dark,

but she still did.

She, too, was to become a victim
of the Brownout Strangler, Eddie Leonski.

[theme music playing]