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headline

Severe storm alert for Melbourne, chance of large hail, heavy rainfall

A severe storm alert has been issued for Melbourne and its surrounds with the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) warning the system could bring large hail and heavy rainfall.

"A humid, unstable air mass lies over Victoria, with a low pressure trough moving slowly eastwards across the State today," the BoM writes.

"Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce large hailstones and heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding in the warning area over the next several hours.

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https://twitter.com/BOM_Vic/status/1479231450478174210

Locations which may be affected include Geelong, Melbourne, Wonthaggi, Frankston, Bacchus Marsh and Warragul.

Northern Queensland is also bracing for a drenching as a monsoon trough slams into the region bringing heavy rain and raising the risk of a tropical cyclone.

"The state's northern tropics are now preparing for a burst of very wet and potentially dangerous weather," Weatherzone said, explaining the trough is likely to develop over the northern Coral Sea during the next few days.

"(It) may become established over Cape York Peninsula by as early as Friday. If this happens, far north Queensland could see a prolonged spell of heavy rain and thunderstorms capable of delivering several hundred millimetres of rain."

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Forecast accumulated rainfall during the seven days ending on Wednesday, January 12, according to the ECMWF model.

Weatherzone said it's too early to know how the low will develop, but that advanced modelling predicts the low could move to the coastline from early next week.

"At this stage, there is potential for the low to become a tropical cyclone as it approaches the Cape York Peninsula on Sunday or Monday, or over the Gulf of Carpentaria early-to-mid next week," it said.

"However, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding this forecast at the moment."

Forecast accumulated 24-hour rainfall and mean sea level pressure at 4pm AEST on Monday, January 10, according to the ECMWF model.

Residents in northern Queensland up to Townsville are being urged to keep across weather alerts.

It comes after ex-tropical cyclone Seth brought a week of wild weather to the nation's east coast.

https://twitter.com/BOM_Qld/status/1478989260900515840

Moisture from the system is currently feeding down into NSW and Victoria fuelling heavy rain.

Yesterday it warned a "burst" of wet and stormy weather will sweep across south-eastern Australia over several days.

New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania are in the firing line with severe storms and heavy rain forecast.

Sydney was lashed by an intense storm overnight.

Record-rainfall has already been felt in parts of Victoria with Weatherzone promising more to come.

"Extremely heavy rain in inland NSW and Victoria overnight could be just a taste of things to come in the next couple of days," it said.

A number of flood warnings are in place across the two states.

Mt Hotham Airport in the Victorian Alps recorded its highest January rainfall in 45 years yesterday with 108.2 mm falling.

The NSW Snowy Mountains and South Coast also recorded falls in excess of 40mm at several locations.

The wet, humid weather comes after northern NSW and south-east Queensland were battered by a dangerous surf and violent tides at the start of the week.

Here's what's happening today across the nation's capitals.

Brisbane

It will be wet and warm in Brisbane today, with the Queensland city reaching a high 27C, the BoM said.

There's a very high chance of showers and the chance of a thunderstorm in the west in the late morning and afternoon.

Sydney

Similar conditions will be felt in the Harbour City as temperatures climb to 28C. There's a high chance of showers and the chance of a thunderstorm, possibly severe.

Winds will tend north-easterly at 30 to 45 km/h.

Showers and a potential storm is forecast for Sydney today.

Melbourne

It will be humid, wet and rainy in Melbourne, which has a high chance of showers.

These are most likely during this afternoon and early evening, BoM said.

There's also a chance of a thunderstorm, most likely this afternoon with heavy falls possible.

Winds will tend northerly at 20 to 30 km/h before shifting to south to south-westerly at 15 to 20 km/h in the late afternoon.

The mercury will reach 29C.

Canberra

The nation's capital has a very high chance of showers and possibly severe thunderstorms today.

Heavy falls are possible, the BoM warns.

Temperatures will reach 25C.

Hobart

The BoM warns Hobart could cop a thunderstorm that potentially bears hail, during the afternoon and early evening.

A very high chance of rain is forecast.

Winds will tend north-easterly 25 to 35 km/h before turning east to south-easterly 15 to 25 km/h in the late afternoon. Wind will shift southeast to south-westerly 20 to 30 km/h in the evening.

Temperatures will reach 25C.

Darwin

Darwin will reach a high of 34C today with a medium chance of showers late this evening and the chance of a thunderstorm with gusty winds.

Winds will tend westerly at 15 to 25 km/h.

Adelaide

It will be a cloudy day in Adelaide with a high of 27C forecast.

There's a medium chance of showers, but a high chance about the hills and southern suburbs.

Winds will tend south-westerly at 25 to 35 km/h before turning southerly in the evening.

Perth

It will be very hot and sunny in Perth with the mercury climbing to a high of 38C.

headline

Dozens of children mummified in an Italian catacomb

A team of scientists is trying to find out why dozens of children were mummified and buried in catacombs at a convent on the Italian island of Sicily.

The first comprehensive study of the child mummies will be led by Kirsty Squires, associate professor of bioarchaeology at Staffordshire University in the UK, and fieldwork is due to begin next week.

At the Capuchin Catacombs, a macabre tourist attraction in Palermo, northern Sicily, the researchers will analyse the remains of 41 children buried in a designated room for children — although there are a total of 163 children buried in the catacombs.

READ MORE: Cyclone risk for Queensland as monsoon trough slams into state

PALERMO, ITALY AUGUST 15: The Catacombs of the Capuchins of Palermo it preserves 8,000 bodies mummified of Capuchins to nobles, bourgeois and representatives of the clergy 1500 until the end of the nineteenth century, to Cuba neighborhood on August 15, 2016 in Palermo, Italy. (Photo by Stefano Montesi/Corbis via Getty).

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"We want to try and understand the lives of these individuals, their health, development, and so on," Ms Squires told CNN Thursday.

"And from that, we also want to compare the biological data with the more cultural side of things."

Ms Squires added the mummies were fully clothed, with some placed in cradles and chairs while others were stood upright with sticks used to hold them in position — and the researchers will examine the significance of why these artefacts were used.

Little is known about these children, who were buried from 1787-1880 and are part of the largest collection of mummified remains in Europe, comprising at least 1,284 bodies.

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"We know that they would have come from middle class families — the mummification rite was reserved for wealthier individuals like nobility, the middle class and the clergy," Ms Squires said.

"So we know that they weren't the poorest members of society, but that's all we know, really." Ms Squires added: "Why weren't they just buried like other individuals?"

The team is using X-ray imaging because it is a non-invasive method that doesn't throw up the same ethical considerations as invasive investigations on human remains, according to a Staffordshire University press release.

"We are using a portable X-ray machine to take radiographs so that we can estimate the age of individuals based on their dental eruption and development, and fusion of the bones," Ms Squires said, adding that she would be looking for signs of disease.

The researchers will use the radiographs — 574 in total, or 14 per mummy — to fill in a biological profile of the children and work out whether mummification was only performed on those of a certain age or sex.

"They will also be utilised to detect the presence of developmental defects, stress indicators and pathological lesions, which aims to gain an insight into the health and lifestyle of children in life," according to the project website.

According to Ms Squires, mummification was practiced in the catacombs from around 1599 to the early 20th century, viewed by the middle class as a "way of keeping their social persona alive after death," with families visiting their buried relatives' bodies.

Ms Squires and her co-investigator Dario Piombino-Mascali of Vilnius University, in Lithuania, will be accompanied by two radiographers and an artist in the catacombs and will spend a week looking at death records. It will be months before findings are published, she said.

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Grisly crimes of Times Square's 'Torso Killer' who confessed to over 80 murders

WARNING: This story contains content some readers might find disturbing.

Today Times Square in New York is known for its dazzling neon signs and sky-high billboards, but in the 1970s the infamous five blocks became the hunting ground of a serial killer.

Richard Cottingham may have taken more than 80 lives.

The crimes of the notorious "Torso Killer" have been laid bare in a new Netflix documentary called Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer.

The three-part series tells the story of a man who left a trail of mutilated bodies across two states lines, and sparked a quest for justice in the daughter of one of his victims.

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'The hotel room from hell'

NYPD knew they were dealing with a "sick" murderer when the charred remains of two women were recovered inside Room 417 of the Travel Inn Motor Hotel on December 2, 1979.

The women had been decapitated and their hands were removed.

The challenge, seven years before DNA technology would transform forensic science, was to identify the two victims.

Times Square in the 1970s was described as being 'sexually-charged'. A place where finding a killer was like 'looking for a needle in a haystack'.

Former detective Malcolm Reiman, who has been involved in the arrest and successful incarceration of three serial killers said: "It was pretty much the hotel room from hell."

"Spatter, gore, puddles, fingerprints, there was nothing," he said of the crime scene in the documentary.

"How can you behead two women, chop off the hands off two women, and not have gore from one end to the other?"

But after they dressed mannequins in the neatly-folded outfits left behind at the crime scene, detectives caught a break; one of the victims was identified as Deedeh Goodarzi, a 22-year-old sex worker.

Deedeh Goodarzi's clothes were recognised by a friend after police made a public appeal for information.

To this day, the other victim's identity remains a mystery.

Both women's skulls have never been recovered.

Murders cross state lines

Fears of a serial killer were confirmed with the brutal murder of 25-year-old Jean Reyner six months later.

The strangled body of the call-girl and single mother was found in the historic Seville Hotel in New York, in a particularly brutal crime scene.

The body of Jean Reyner was found in a hotel room on May 15, 1980.

Her throat had been slit and the room had been set on fire.

The killer had severed her breasts and placed them on the headboard.

Former Bronx Homicide commander and criminal profiler Vernon Geberth believes the move was "for shock value."

Valerie Ann Street was a sex worker who had travelled to New York from Miami, Florida. She had only been in town for a few days before she was picked up by a man and brought to New Jersey.

Shock was what a maid at the Quality Inn, on Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights New Jersey felt eleven days before Ms Reyner.

As she was vacuuming she discovered the handcuffed body of sex worker Valerie Ann Street under the bed.

Ms Street had been strangled and there were scratches and cuts around her breasts.

Officers didn't know it then, but the discovery of Ms Street is what marked the beginning of the end of the killer's reign of terror.

A pattern was being realised; it recalled another murder that took place at the same Quality Inn.

The suffocated body of X-Ray technician Maryann Carr, 28, was found in the parking lot on December 16, 1977.

Like Ms Street, her body bore evidence she had been handcuffed on her ankles and her wrists.

The body of Maryann Carr was found dumped behind Little the motel in 1977.

Arrest unmasks 'normal' father-of-three

Described as average and normal, New Jersey man Richard Cottingham was a father-of-three with a marriage that was slowly unravelling.

But on May 22, 1980 Cottingham's life as a predator came to light.

Weeks after the discovery of Ms Street's body, on-edge workers at the Quality Inn heard the muffled screams of a woman emanating from another hotel room.

They notified police.

Inside police found a terrified woman with Cottingham.

Richard Cottingham was unmasked as the 'Torso Killer' in 1980.

Leslie Ann O'Dell, a 18-year-old prostitute, had been tortured and assaulted for hours.

Cottingham was arrested.

After a search warrant was issued, officers commenced a search of the computer technician's house in Lodi, New Jersey.

Inside a locked basement they found handcuffs, pornographic artwork, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade — and inside a locked box, items from some of the victims.

The basement became known as the "trophy room."

The "Torso Killer" had been found.

Officers began linking the then 33-year-old to more unsolved murders and violent attacks across New York State and New Jersey.

Cottingham was arrested and put on trial, where he initially denied his acts of violence.

But by August 1984, he had been found guilty of five murders and sentenced to almost 200 years in prison.

Daughter's mission to find justice for 'unidentified victims'

In 2009, after decades of silence, Cottingham began talking to Nadia Fezzani, a journalist who has interviewed multiple serial killers within the US.

"It was a game to me, it was mainly psychological," Cottingham, who claims to feel remorse, is shown saying to Fezzani in the documentary.

"I was able to get almost any woman to do what I wanted them to do.

"It was god-like almost."

In the years since his arrest Cottingham has admitted to killing more than 80 woman and teens, possibly "up to 100", Fezzani said.

Jennifer Weiss, the biological daughter to victim Deedeh Goodarzi, has also struck up an unlikely rapport with the killer and is working with detectives to help solve cold cases.

Cottingham murdered Jennifer Weiss' birth mother in a Times Square motel room in 1979. Richard Cottingham is now 75-years-old.

"All of the women who Richard killed left this world in a horrific way. It always weighs heavily on me, like a dark cloud," Ms Weiss said in the documentary.

"We are not friends.

"I maintain a relationship with Richard now because I want the names of the unidentified victims whose lives he took. Lives who didn't come to fruition.

"They deserve justice."

In 2020 Cottingham admitted to strangling 13-year-old Jacalyn Harp in 1968, his youngest victim, and 15-year-old Denise Falasca in 1969.

Jacalyn Harp was 13-years-old at the time of her murder. Richard Cottingham, centre, known as the "Torso Killer," pleads guilty Tuesday, April 27, 2021, to two 1974 murders, finally closing the cold case deaths of teenage friends. (New Jersey Courts via AP)

And as recently as April 2021 he plead guilty to drowning two New Jersey teens after seizing them while they were shopping at a mall in 1974.

Lorraine Marie Kelly, 16, and Mary Ann Pryor, 17, had been shopping for bathing suits for a trip to the Jersey Shore when they were abducted.

Cottingham is currently serving his numerous life sentences at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey.

You can stream Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer on Netflix.