WAS the murdered Pyjama Girl really Linda Agostini?
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That is the question playwright Emma Gibson is asking as she researches the circumstances of the young woman whose body was found on the Howlong road just west of Albury in September 1934.
Gibson aims to put on an “on-stage documentary” at the Butter Factory in Wodonga in October.
The Pyjama Girl’s body, wearing an embroidered pyjama top, was discovered by farmer Tom Griffith in a roadside drain and the mystery of her identity puzzled police and public for a decade.
In 1944 a waiter, Tony Agostini, confessed to the NSW Police commissioner he had killed his wife.
Gibson, 28, who was raised at Kiewa and attended Wodonga High School, yesterday said a book by Richard Evans published in 2004 cast doubts about the woman’s true identity.
“I agreed with him there were inconsistencies (in the evidence),’’ she said.
Gibson will be meeting Albury and District Historical Society members tonight to see if they can shed any more light on the killing, perhaps from stories handed down by parents or grandparents.
“I have found one lady of 95 in Canberra who was a friend of Linda when they were teenagers,’’ she said.
“But I also want to know what Albury was like in the 1930s and 1940s.”
Gibson’s work as an emerging playwright is supported by the Australia Council.
She has spent hours sifting through documents in the National Library of Australia and yesterday was studying contemporary reports from The Border Mail, including that of the inquest held at the Albury Court House.
Her plan is to use transcripts of new interviews in her documentary.
She can be contacted on pyjama.play@gmail.com.