Fifty-seven-year-old Wilhelmina Kruger had worked as a cleaning woman at the Piccadilly Arcade in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia for about three years. On the morning of January 29th, 1966, Wilhelmina began her shift at around two a.m., as she usually did. Two hours later, she was spotted by a group of people who were returning to their nearby hotel after a night out. Wilhelmina was seen mopping the floor at the top of an escalator in the arcade.
Not long after that, a butcher on his way in to work stumbled across a ghastly sight: Wilhelmina Kruger lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase in the arcade’s basement parking lot. She was nearly nude, her body only covered with part of a torn petticoat and a ripped and blood-stained bra. She had been strangled with a piece of fabric, which was found still tied around her neck.
Police arrived and processed the scene. They quickly determined that Wilhelmina had been attacked from behind as she mopped the tiles at the top of the escalator. She had been hit in the head and strangled into unconsciousness, then dragged down the escalator feet-first, and subsequently dragged down two more flights of stairs to the basement where her body was discovered. It was also believed that she had been mutilated and sexually assaulted after she was already dead. Her shoes, false teeth, and apron were found on the stairs, along with a man’s watch and two blond hairs believed to belong to the killer. Authorities also found bloody prints from a man’s shoe both alongside the body and on the stairs.
Other than the physical evidence obtained by police, a few witnesses also reported seeing a dirty, tan-colored car parked nearby that was later seen to be speeding away from the arcade. This vehicle was thought to be a 1956 Holden Utility with pieces of plywood crudely attached to the back. A passerby who had spoken to the driver of this vehicle described him as a middle-aged blond man of average height, weighing around two-hundred pounds and clad in blue coveralls.
Almost immediately, investigators began looking into a link between the murder of Wilhelmina Kruger and that of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock from 1965, better known as the Wanda Beach murders. Notable similarities included the fact that both crimes involved sexual assault that had taken place after the deaths of the victims, and that in both cases, the bodies had been dragged some distance and left in the open, with no real attempts made to conceal them effectively.
Though the scene of Wilhelmina’s murder provided ample clues for police to pursue, they made little progress in finding the killer, and not long afterward, a very similar crime would grab the headlines, another horrific murder in a year that the Australian press would dub one of the most violent in recent memory.
On February 18th, 1966, a strangled and mutilated body was discovered in scrubland near Lucas Heights in the southern Sydney suburb of Menai. The remains were later identified as those of twenty-four-year-old Anna Dowlingkoa, a sex worker originally from the Sydney suburb of Bondi. Authorities determined that she had last been seen at around eleven-thirty p.m. on the night of February 17th, leaving a nightclub in Kings Cross.
Like Wilhelmina Kruger a month before, Anna Dowlingkoa appeared to have been sexually assaulted and stabbed after being strangled to death. Investigators were unable to determine where the actual killing had taken place.
Despite a large reward and an inquiry into the links between the slayings of Anna Dowlingkoa, Wilhelmina Kruger, and the girls on Wanda Beach, no solid leads could be uncovered, and questions surrounding the four deaths remain unanswered.
Crime Immemorial 