Julie's Gone – Episode 5: The Deadly Decade

Podcast: Casefile Presents
Host: Helen Thomas
Release Date: July 30, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode examines the deadly decade for women in Victoria, Australia, spanning 1975–1985. Investigative journalist Helen Thomas, along with criminologists, researchers, and advocates, unpacks a grim period marked by a string of unsolved murders and disappearances—including the haunting case of Julie Ann Garciacelay, whose vanishing remains an enigma after 50 years. The episode explores failures in police investigations, systemic issues in attitudes toward violence against women, and the intersecting social and historical forces that allowed so many murders to go unresolved.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Scale of Violence Against Women in Australia

• Helen Thomas opens by citing recent concerning statistics on gendered violence in Australia: in 2024, at least 69 women were allegedly murdered by men—possibly as high as 78 according to advocacy groups ([01:14]).

  "Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared Australia faced a national crisis of violence against women, with one woman being killed every four days." — Helen Thomas ([01:35])

• While today's perpetrators are often quickly identified, this wasn't the case between 1975 and 1985, a period of unsolved brutal crimes against women—including at least 19 murders that remain cold.

2. Patterns, Links, and Systemic Failures in Investigations

• Phil Cleary (advocate & researcher) discusses the flawed nature of police investigations during this era, impacted by male-dominated, non-feminist thinking within the force ([04:07]).

  "The way the police investigated the killings of women were flawed, intrinsically flawed. The police force was dominated by men. It was not dominated by feminist thinking." — Phil Cleary ([04:07])

• Cleary stresses lack of research and government accountability in understanding or profiling killers, noting specific investigational failures (e.g., in the Maria James case, police ignored a known violent man living locally).

• Brian Williams, author of "Somebody Knows Something," explores at least six Tainong-Frankston murders and possible links to earlier violence. According to Williams, certain suspects were never thoroughly investigated, even as similarities emerged among cases ([06:22]).

• Williams critiques the tendency to blame or scrutinize victims, especially young women and teens, rather than focusing on perpetrator patterns ([07:41]).

  "There was enormous emphasis on what the victims were doing at the time... None of the victims were doing anything other than just innocently living through their lives." — Brian Williams ([07:51])

3. Victim-blaming, Gendered Attitudes, and Police Culture

• Both Thomas and Williams challenge persistent victim-blaming—highlighted by outdated notions such as 'they were asking for it' ([08:18]).

• They discuss how similarities in numerous cases (e.g., women stabbed in their homes with children nearby) were never robustly pursued as potentially linked crimes ([08:29]).

• Only the 1977 Easey Street double homicide appears potentially solvable, with a recent arrest and extradition. Julie's own case remains cold, its investigation hindered by these broader systemic issues ([09:25]).

4. Challenges of Policing and Accountability in the 1970s-80s

• Jude McCulloch (criminologist, Monash University) contextualizes the high number of unsolved homicides, linking it to attitudes of the time and the lack of police accountability or external oversight ([10:03], [10:44]).

  "It was definitely a time where it was a very unhappy road for women to report sexual assaults... they were being treated like criminals." — Jude McCulloch ([10:56])

• McCulloch suggests that inadequate investigations allowed repeat offenders to escalate their violence, a cycle largely unchecked by the justice system ([12:07]).

  "Men who use violence against women tend to... be repeats. When [violence] escalates to lethal violence and there's no consequences, why wouldn't it be repeated?" — Jude McCulloch ([12:07])

• Sloppy or disinterested police work—such as failing to interview key witnesses—further contributed to these unsolved murders ([14:39]).

  "Even without advanced forensics, there were still eyewitnesses, still neighbours, there were still people the police didn't talk to—or if they did, they never went back." — Jude McCulloch ([14:39])

5. The Investigative Burden & Structural Obstacles

• Brian Williams highlights that homicide squads of the period were overwhelmed by sheer caseloads and inadequately equipped. Too often, women's disappearances were initially dismissed as runaway cases ([16:19]).

  "All of these cases were initially considered missing person cases... it was only when their bodies were found that it was a case of reverse engineering." — Brian Williams ([16:19])

• McCulloch describes the "brotherhood" of the police—a bastion of male ideals—where violence against women wasn't seen as the police's core business ([17:55]).

  "There was no one in the homicide squad who was female until the early 90s... the brotherhood." — Jude McCulloch ([17:55]) "Police would see [intimate partner violence] as just a domestic that really had nothing to do with them." — McCulloch ([17:55])

6. The Trauma to Families and the Search for Justice

• Many cases involved women murdered in their own homes, sometimes with their children present, with extremely rare resolution or closure for families.

• Academic research from Monash confirms that in nearly a quarter of intimate partner homicides, children were present—a statistic that remains disturbingly high ([20:44]).

  "There were 23% of the cases where the sentencing judgment mentioned that the children were present... either witnessed it or were present in the vicinity." — Researcher/Academic ([21:23])

7. Access to Information and Ongoing Challenges

• Phil Cleary speaks to the continued difficulty accessing public records and assembling reliable data on murdered women, especially First Nations women ([23:19]).

  "There is no index on women murdered by an ex partner or a bloke... It's very hard to actually assemble a list of murders." — Phil Cleary ([23:19])

• Researcher/Academic further notes that First Nations women's murders are less likely to be reported, investigated, or taken seriously by authorities, compounding the historical invisibility of their victimization ([24:28]).

8. The Importance of Remembering & Studying History

• As time passes, unsolved murders become even harder to crack due to deaths of witnesses, loss of memory, and changes to physical landscapes ([26:25]).

  "There's a window of time when things can be solved... by the time you reach the 40-year mark, you're starting to push that window out a bit." — Brian Williams ([26:25])

• Phil Cleary insists on the necessity of examining these cases to understand and combat ongoing gendered violence:

  "It puts violence against women in a historical context. It takes us to the heart of the violence... And also at the personal level, families are entitled to get some understanding of what had happened to their girl, their mother, their sister, their niece." — Phil Cleary ([27:15])

• McCulloch reframes unsolved murders owing to investigational failings as "miscarriages of justice" ([28:07]).

• Despite setbacks, recent breakthroughs in historical cases (such as the Easy Street murders) illustrate hope for progress if scrutiny and public attention continue ([28:48]).

  "It's important to keep Julie in the public domain and to continue to push for attention." — Researcher/Academic ([29:18])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The way the police investigated the killings of women were flawed, intrinsically flawed. ...There were no feminist threads. Feminism was on the march in the late 60s and 70s. ...Ironically, women were putting themselves at risk more often than before because there was a world that was contemptuous of them..."
  — Phil Cleary ([04:07])

• "All we can do is speculate, which is the tragedy of it, because perhaps in some cases you can't solve a murder and it's not anybody's fault. But you'd have to say not every stone was turned over. In fact, there was a whole lot that weren't looked at at all."
  — Jude McCulloch ([19:15])

• "So it's important to keep Julie in the public domain and to continue to push for attention."
  — Researcher/Academic ([29:18])

• "Let's just say there should be a study of the past 50 years of violence against women."
  — Phil Cleary ([27:15])

• "When people aren't convicted and they should have been.... That's also a miscarriage of justice."
  — Jude McCulloch ([28:07])

Important Timestamps by Topic

• Overview of Australia’s Gendered Violence Crisis: [01:14–04:00]
• Failures in Police Investigations & Victim-Blaming: [04:07–08:29]
• Case Details: Tainong-Frankston & Easy Street Murders: [06:22–08:29]
• The Policing Culture, Institutional Sexism: [10:03–10:56], [17:55]
• Research on Repeat Offenders & Children as Witnesses: [12:07–14:39], [20:44–21:50]
• Challenges of Reporting for First Nations Victims: [23:19–24:28]
• Need for Historical Reckoning & Study: [26:25–29:18]
• Preview of Next Episode/Teasers: [29:28–29:59]

Tone and Style

The episode adopts an urgent, investigative, and empathetic tone. It balances personal stories and survivor advocacy with hard-hitting analysis, striving to honor the lost and press for meaningful systemic reform. The voices of Helen Thomas, Phil Cleary, Jude McCulloch, Brian Williams, and Monash researchers anchor the narrative in expertise and lived experience, refusing to offer easy comfort yet maintaining hope for progress.

For listeners and readers—this episode lays bare the structural, social, and institutional factors behind a deadly decade, making clear why cases like Julie Ann Garciacelay’s disappearance must remain in the public eye.