Police believe a suspicious fire next door to a tobacconist in Oakleigh is likely connected to a series of ongoing arson attacks across Melbourne.

Fire crews were called to extinguish a blaze at a vacant business on Station Street about 3.25am.

The fire caused significant damage to a number of surrounding businesses, including a tobacco store located next door.

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No one was inside the businesses at the time of the fire.

The tobacconist had only been open for three months.

Alex, a friend of the owner, said he believed the incident wasn't connected to the recent spate of attacks.

"We have got no trouble with anyone, no threats – no nothing," he said.

"It's just a normal business open to make an income."

But police today told 9News they suspected it was related to other similar fires, with a range of state and federal agencies working on the investigation.

Over the past few weeks, police have visited over 75 tobacco stores across the state to speak to store owners and staff.

More than a dozen tobacconists have been targeted since March, including two separate incidents in Hadfield last week.

Detectives are appealing for anyone in the area who may have CCTV or dash cam footage of the incident.

A US man who killed six members of a Nebraska family nearly 50 years ago has died after complaining about chest pain.

Erwin Charles Simants, who was 77, died Thursday at a Lincoln hospital, his attorney, Robert Lindemeier, told the Lincoln Journal Star.

Simants initially was sentenced to die in the electric chair for shooting Henry and Audrey Kellie, along with their son, David, and three of their grandchildren in 1975.

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He had been hired to do odd jobs for the family at their home in Sutherland, about 32 kilometres from North Platte.

Two of the victims also were sexually assaulted.

But that sentence was overturned in 1979, when the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered a new trial because the sheriff, a trial witness, played cards with some of the jurors while they were sequestered.

At retrial he was found not responsible by reason of insanity.

He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and spent the rest of his life at a state psychiatric hospital.

The second insanity verdict prompted changes to Nebraska’s insanity law.

The changes were part of a national movement in the legal world that gained prominence when John Hinkley was acquitted by reason of insanity for shooting President Ronald Reagan.

Those changes shifted the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence and gave judges — not mental health boards — authority to decide when to release patients found not responsible by reason of insanity.

In Simants' last competency evaluation in December, a judge ruled that he was still considered mentally ill and dangerous.

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Audrey Brown, the only surviving Kellie sibling who had moved to Colorado just weeks before Simants’ 1975 attack, died in 2018.

She had driven to Lincoln for Simants’ annual review hearings each year for more than three decades.

“I think the courts need to recognise, and the public needs to recognise, there was a real family involved in this, and somebody still loves them and cares about them,” she said in 2013.

A grand jury will convene to investigate Simants' death.

Lancaster County’s Chief Deputy Sheriff Ben Houchin said Simants had complained of chest pains, although his exact cause of death wasn’t immediately known.

A Te Kūiti resident came face-to-face with two armed bank robbers in the town.

Emergency services were called to an intersection in Avalon at 7pm.

Sajid Mehmood had hoped to keep the conviction secret and to return to driving.

The long search for Tom Phillips has taken another strange turn.

A man from New South Wales has been charged with the murder of missing Victorian woman Debra Campbell, who disappeared almost 40 years ago.

Campbell was just 21 when she went missing in 1984 from her Melbourne home.

A coronial inquest concluded in 1998 that she was likely dead – although how exactly she died was never established.

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Victorian police put out a public appeal for more information about the Air Force member's disappearance in April, and today a man was arrested in NSW following a joint investigation between the two states' forces.

The 65-year-old man was arrested in Cardiff South, near Lake Macquarie in the NSW Hunter region.

He was charged with murder and faced Belmont Local Court.

He will face court once again on Friday as police attempt to extradite him to Victoria.

As part of the April call for new information about the disappearance, Campbell's mother said she was hoping the renewed investigation would give the family much-needed answers.

"The most awful part is not knowing where she is or what happened to her, and that the person responsible for taking my daughter away has not been held accountable," Campbell's mother Jean said at the time.

"I'm desperately hopeful that the re-investigation of my daughters' case may bring us answers after all these years.

"I love her and still miss her so dearly."

Campbell was a member of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) when she disappeared.

She was reported missing after she didn't show up for a shift.

The poorly reviewed cookware looks the same as that in the current New World promotion.

His mother told the judge: ‘I love my son but not the wrong that he does’.

A man is helping police with a murder investigation after another man was found dead at a Caboolture home in what was described as a "graphic" crime scene.

A 41-year-old man's carer went to his address in Caboolture South about 9am and found blood in the home, sparking a triple zero call, police said.

When officers arrived, they found the man's body inside the home.

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Detective Inspector Stephen Windsor said there was a substantial amount of blood throughout the home in what was a "graphic" encounter for first responders.

He said a weapon was used in the incident.

"It is fair to say the victim has sustained injuries to his neck," he added.

A 23-year-old man, who does not reside in the Moreton Bay area, is helping police with their inquiries.

Windsor said the men were not known to each other.

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He added it doesn't appear to be a home invasion and the men had some contact in the early hours of this morning.

Police are not looking for any other suspects at this stage.

"A crime scene has been established and investigations are ongoing," police said.