Six days later 31-year-old Pauline Thompson was strangled after a night out. She had been beaten and strangled, and because she was found to be in possession of her purse it was evident that robbery was not the motive. On May 3, 1942, Ivy Violet McLeod, 40, was found dead in Albert Park, Melbourne. Prior to departing to Australia, Leonski had assaulted a woman in San Antonio, albeit he was never disciplined for this. The Army had set up a temporary base (Camp Pell) in Royal Park just north of the city and the university. Army in February 1941 and arrived in Melbourne, Australia, on February 2, 1942, after the United States had entered World War II.

Leonski worked for a time as a delivery boy. Accordingly, the psychologist ruled that Leonski's crimes were born of his resentment and hatred of his mother and thus constituted 'symbolic matricide.' Leonski had been bullied by other neighborhood kids and called a mama's boy. According to a psychologist who interviewed Leonski during his trial, his mother had been overprotective and controlling. One of his brothers was committed to a mental institution. The sixth child of Russian-Jewish immigrants John Leonski, laborer, and his wife Amelia, née Harkavitz, in Kenvil, New Jersey, Leonski grew up in an abusive, alcoholic family. Leonski was the first and only citizen of another country to have been tried and sentenced to death in Australia under the law of their own country.

He was court-martialed for murder under American military law, sentenced to death, and executed. Leonski was initially arrested by Melbourne police, but was then transferred to U.S. His self-confessed motive for the killings was a twisted fascination with female voices, especially when they were singing, and his claim that he killed the women to 'get their voices'. Leonski was dubbed The Brownout Strangler, after Melbourne's wartime practice of dropping the electricity voltage to conserve energy. Edward Joseph Leonski (Decem– November 9, 1942) was a United States Army soldier and serial killer responsible for the strangling murders of three women in Melbourne, Australia in 1942.

Murder at Dusk by Ian W. Shaw