In Love and Murder: Crimes of Passion That Shocked the World

By William Webb

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is…deadly? For the people in this book, that’s certainly the case. They acted out of love and performed some of the most hideous acts of passion in the history of romance.

This short book follows several cases of deadly passion, from the celebrated French woman who had enough of her husband&

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minute Help, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781629177649

Book preview

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Dear reader, your heart may not be able to handle the shocking true facts presented in this humble volume. You have been warned.

Introduction

Crimes of passion have long fascinated us because they twist the most basic and desirable of emotions into evil and violence. When people kill or try to kill for love, it strikes straight to our hearts and makes us question our most basic beliefs. We like to associate love with peace and compassion, but it often generates violence.

Unlike most murderers, we can often sympathize with the perpetrators in crimes of passion. In many cases, they are the victims of callous lovers and sociopaths. At one time, French law even recognized the killing of a cheating spouse as justifiable homicide.

The emotions it raises are what make crimes of passion so hard to understand or to prosecute. Yet those emotions are what make such crimes so fascinating.

Antonio Agostini and the Pajama Girl

Some crimes of passion are so sensational that they can capture the imagination of an entire nation. A classic example of such a crime is Australia’s legendary Pajama Girl mystery from the 1930s. The mystery was so engrossing that it actually diverted Australians’ attention from the Great Depression that was then hitting their nation hard.

The case first attracted attention in August, 1934 when a man named Tom Griffith was moving a bull near the town of Albury, New South Wales. As he tried to lead a bull down a road, Griffith noticed something in a ditch and went to take a look. To his horror, Griffith discovered that the thing in the ditch was a woman wearing silk pajamas, hence the term Pyjama Girl (in Australia, pajama is spelled the British way with a Y). The body was soaked in kerosene and burned in an attempt to destroy evidence.

Part of the reason the case attracted so much attention was that nobody could identify the girl. Forensics wasn’t very advanced in 1934, and police were unable to identify the victim. The body was even put on public display in an attempt to identify the victim. During the initial investigation, at least two missing women were listed as possible identities for the victim, Linda Agostini and Anna Philomena Morgan. Unfortunately, police couldn’t make a positive identification.

The pajamas themselves added a note of sensationalism to the crime. At the time, respectable women in Australia were not supposed to wear pajamas. Silk pajamas, like those worn by the girl, were equated with loose women and prostitutes. 

It Took 10 Years to Solve the Crime

Astoundingly, it took 10 years to solve the crime and bring the perpetrator to justice. The Pajama Girl’s body was preserved in a tank of chemicals for future police work and stored at the University in Sydney and later at police headquarters. In 1944, the preservation work paid off when the girl in the pajamas was finally identified.

By examining dental records, investigators determined that the girl was Linda Agostini, an English immigrant who had disappeared in 1934. The identity also gave investigators a suspect, Linda’s husband Antonio (or Tony) Agostini, an Italian immigrant. Agostini was arrested in Sydney and extradited to Melbourne to stand trial for murder; he and Linda had been living in Melbourne at the time of her disappearance.

Incredibly, Sydney’s police commissioner William McKay knew Agostini, who had worked in the cloakroom at one of his favorite restaurants, Romanos. McKay asked Agostini to come over to his office for a chat. During