THE PYJAMA GIRL MYSTERY: Australia's Decade-Long Search for a Dead Woman's Name

The Pyjama Girl

On September 1, 1934, a farmer near Albury, New South Wales, found a woman's body in a roadside culvert — shot, beaten, burned, dressed only in silk pyjamas printed with a Chinese dragon. No one could name her. For ten years her preserved body lay on display at the University of Sydney while thousands filed past hoping to recognize her. Newsreels covered it. Police dragged a lake. The reward climbed. Nothing.

Then in 1944, dental records produced a match, and a man named Antonio Agostini confessed to police that he'd shot his wife by accident and driven her body across state lines. He served three years, was deported, and Australia moved on.

Except the case may not be closed. Drawing on inquest transcripts, courtroom testimony, and newspaper coverage written as it happened, this book traces the decade-long mystery — and the evidence later researchers have used to question whether the woman buried as Linda Agostini was ever correctly identified at all. Every disputed claim is sourced to the record.