Show Notes
Julie Ann Garciacelay was not quite 20 when she vanished from her inner-city apartment in Melbourne 50 years ago.
Three men who were with her that night in July 1975 told police the young American left to make a phone call and didn’t return. One would be linked to the infamous Easey Street murders 18 months later.
Julie has never been seen since, nor has her body been found. Her disappearance is one of Australia’s oldest, most haunting ‘cold cases’. But investigative journalist Helen Thomas has unearthed new information about her vanishing - so far from home, almost lost in time… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Julie's Gone
Not long after this podcast was released last year, Julie Garciacelay's mother, Ruth, died in California. She was 93. Yet, more than 50 years after her daughter vanished, Ruth's DNA could prove crucial in solving the case.
When Julie and her two sisters were little, their mother bought them a toy piano to share. Julie took to it with passion and became a gifted pianist. Now, her legacy lives on through the piano scholarship Ruth Garciacelay set up, in her daughter’s name, in northern California.
Veteran detectives believe the crucial clue that can lead to an ancient ‘cold case’ like Julie Garciacelay’s being solved is usually found in the original file.
In the decade that followed Julie’s murder, 19 other women suffered violent deaths in Melbourne.
When Ruth Garciacelay realised her daughter really was missing, she flew to Australia from the US. A couple of years later, she returned to Melbourne and had an unnerving encounter with one of the men who’d been with Julie the night she disappeared.