Toyah's Murder: Why did Rajwinder Singh flee?

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Speaker 3 He saw a murder and ran for his life. This is Raj Winder Singh's version of what happened on the beach in October 2018.

Speaker 3 I'm Stephen Stockwell, and just a warning, we'll be discussing violent acts and injuries and distressing content in this episode. Welcome to the case of Toya's murder.

Speaker 1 The body of Toya accordingly was found at Morngetty Beach north of Cairns.

Speaker 2 Her face adorns billboards and stickers across the region.

Speaker 1 Searching for clues in the murder of the 24-year-old pharmacy worker alongside the idyllic and isolated beaches. This should not not happen to a young woman out there walking her dog on a Sunday.

Speaker 3 We're nearing the end of the first week of the trial of Toya Cording Lee's accused murderer Rajwinda Singh and it's been kind of jarring as we've worked through witnesses.

Speaker 3 We have these kind of procedural moments confirming CCTV and then kind of really emotional retellings from her family, you know, from the day that Toya went missing through to her body being found.

Speaker 3 And with me as, you know, I'm watching this unfold in the in the Kennedy Supreme Court is ABC reporter Chris Tester and Chris really kind of huge range of evidence that we've seen.

Speaker 1 Yes, big days to start the trial and very poignant moments in the courtroom.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you've been putting up with me in that room for almost a week now as well. And yeah, a lot has happened since our last episode.
Can you give us like a 60-second wrap of the last couple of days?

Speaker 1 Well, we've heard about the frenzied nature in which Toy accordingly must have died. There are descriptions of her injuries.
But was it a crazy person or someone on drugs?

Speaker 1 That's the version that the defence barrister Greg Maguire has told the jury to consider. As he opened his case, we already heard the prosecution's version.

Speaker 1 Now it's been the defence's turn to explain what they say has happened. That Rajwinder Singh, far from being a murderer himself, actually witnessed two masked killers on the beach that day.

Speaker 1 and ran for his life because he was afraid. They say he was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 1 We've heard evidence from Troy Cordingley, Toy's father, about how he found her body in the sand that day.

Speaker 1 From Vanessa Gardner, Toya's mother, about being woken in the middle of the night to news her daughter was missing. And then she and her son Jack went to the beach to search.

Speaker 1 We've heard evidence and cross-examination of Marco Heidenreich, Toya's boyfriend, about where he was that day and how he reacted to the news that his girlfriend's body had been found on the beach.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Chris. Yeah, I'm really interested in unpacking the relationship between Toya's boyfriend and the police that we're investigating.

Speaker 3 That was a real focal point of part of the cross-examination. We'll get to that later in this episode.

Speaker 3 But, you know, being here in Cairns for me has really kind of made me feel just like so close to this. I had this realisation.

Speaker 3 Yesterday I was walking past a coffee shop and I recognised the name and I thought, why do I know that name?

Speaker 3 And it's because it's the coffee shop that we saw CCTV from of Toya accordingly walking past.

Speaker 3 And I realised that, you know, I've been walking past where her car was parked before she headed to Wongetty Beach. And it was this visceral connection, I guess, between this case and life in Cairns.

Speaker 1 Well, as we heard from the outset from the prosecution, that Toy accordingly was someone in Cairns doing what she normally did that day, walking her dog along Wongetty Beach north of Cairns on October the 21st, 2018.

Speaker 1 And I guess for many Cairns residents, the way some of this evidence is being presented, particularly from the prosecutor Nathan Crane, locations are being spoken about.

Speaker 1 And he's kind of putting it in that local context,

Speaker 1 you know, as though the jury knows exactly where these things happened because, you know, Far North Queensland is a big place geographically, but it's a small community.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know, we've seen that connection with the case, very full courtroom over the last few days.
There's barely been a seat spare in the public galleries.

Speaker 3 We've watched these proceedings. And, you know, a big part of those proceedings was the defence opening, Chris, you know, their version of what happened on the beach in October 2018.

Speaker 3 Braz Winder Singh pleading not guilty in this trial, so they're defending him. And

Speaker 3 their opening really focused on kind of other people around the beach at that time, right?

Speaker 1 It did, yeah. And

Speaker 1 a bit about Raj Winder Singh himself.

Speaker 1 I guess the first we've heard of what he's like, the defence is saying that we will hear evidence during this trial about him being quite a placid, quietly spoken man.

Speaker 1 And we've also heard about some of the injuries that Toy Cordingley sustained during this attack. And just a heads up, some of this content may be distressing.

Speaker 1 But we heard about some of those defensive wounds and, of course, that deep cut to her neck. In Defense Barrister Greg Maguire's words, she was almost decapitated.

Speaker 1 And he's really characterised this attack as something that a man like Raj Winder Singh would not have done.

Speaker 1 Pointing to that, of course, we're going to hear that conversation that Raj Winder Singh had in the Cairns watch house cell back in March 2023 with an undercover police officer.

Speaker 1 He didn't know that person was an undercover police officer or that it was being recorded. But in that, he offered his version of what happened, that he saw the killers.

Speaker 1 He described them as having their faces covered,

Speaker 1 mentioned there being two of them, and that he was afraid and that he ran for his life.

Speaker 1 And Greg Maguire said, quoting from that conversation, that Rajwinder Singh put it, that running was his biggest mistake.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I mean, you're talking about the injuries that the toy corner suffered. You know, Defense Barrister Greg Maguire saying that, you know, she was almost decapitated.

Speaker 3 I think at one point he was describing, you know, if she'd still been alive at that point, there would have been kind of blood spurting out of her neck, which is a really kind of, you know, quite a visceral description of what would have been happening on that beach.

Speaker 3 And I guess drawing a link, you know, between that act and

Speaker 3 saying his client was a mild-mannered man who I guess the link is that he's not something he could have been or would have been capable of. And he described the weapon as well.

Speaker 3 I mean, when we had the prosecution openings, they were talking about how the jury would see evidence that quite a small weapon could have caused the injuries to toy accordingly.

Speaker 3 Greg Maguire going in a different direction, saying it could have been quite a big knife.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and he's sort of pointed to the fact that this area,

Speaker 1 it's hard to describe whether it's, you know, semi-secluded or secluded, but that kind of scrub area is actually frequented, he says, by pig hunters, people who might carry larger knives with them either for pig hunting or for protection.

Speaker 1 We're going to hear, I guess, in the coming weeks the sort of evidence that he's foreshadowing here, but he's certainly throwing out there the possibility that other people may have been involved.

Speaker 3 And there were a couple of names kind of mentioned already at this point.

Speaker 3 I mean, we haven't heard evidence from these people, but Greg Maguire mentioned a guy who was around the beach at that time, didn't he?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he mentioned a man named Evan McRae, who was one of the names. You remember we spoke about that long list of more than 400 names of potential witnesses

Speaker 1 that the jury will hear from. And Nathan Crane did mention that we will hear from Evan McRae and also from his mother.

Speaker 1 The prosecution will say that he wasn't there at the time, but the defense has suggested that we focus on a text message that he sent in the days leading up to it that he hated

Speaker 1 himself and his family and that he needed to, quote, go pigging to kill something. Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Okay. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how this kind of unfolds in the next little while.
And I mean, you spoke a bit about,

Speaker 3 you know, the way that the defence, or we expect the defence, will start characterising that recording with the undercover police officer that was taken in the cell when Rajwinda Singh was arrested in Australia after being extradited from India.

Speaker 3 And yeah, like a very different version of that, basically saying that he was terrified, he was scared, and he witnessed this thing and he was worried that those people who'd murdered Toy accordingly, they say, were going to come after him.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 1 We did hear a little mention of that undercover recording in the Crown Prosecution opening. They've suggested that it's all untrue.
But Greg Maguire went further in actually quoting from a transcript.

Speaker 1 Obviously, we haven't heard this recording yet, so there may be more to come. Stay tuned to this podcast and the rest of the trial for that.

Speaker 1 But one quote that apart from him describing that running was his biggest mistake and that that was why they think I've done something, end quote, was he said, I've surrendered myself to God and it's up to him now.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it'd be interesting to hear how this all kind of unfolds. It sounds like we're going to be played that recording as well.
So that'll be a really big moment of this trial.

Speaker 3 So we'll keep you posted with that.

Speaker 3 And if you're just joining us for the first time on the pod with this episode, make sure you jump back into our previous couple of episodes that Chris and I have produced.

Speaker 3 We've got an episode kind of introducing you to this case and then the first day of the trial, basically, the jury selection, the prosecution opening as well.

Speaker 3 So, you're kind of working our way through that. And, Chris, we've now finished the openings and we've gone past that part of the trial and into witnesses, basically.

Speaker 3 So, the last few days have really been the kind of witnesses being presented, different people coming up, talking through their recollections of the day, things like that.

Speaker 3 We've heard from Toya's mum and dad, how they heard about how she was missing, and how they searched. Initially, they went to the beach.

Speaker 3 Basically, Toya's mum kind of headed north with her son, Jack, and and Toya's dad went south. Have I got that right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 They've arrived in the dark, you've got to remember.

Speaker 1 Not a very well-lit area per their description, so they couldn't see too much, but they've actually stayed there until dawn broke and continued searching the beach in the daylight.

Speaker 1 And I guess that's when some quite significant discoveries were made by both Vanessa Gardner, Toya's mum, and Troy Cordingly, Toya's dad.

Speaker 3 What did they find?

Speaker 1 Well, first, Vanessa was actually walking up the beach, and she described kind of being on the sand and looking toward the scrub at one point and noticing

Speaker 1 something and going closer, and she actually found Toy's dog, Indy, tied really tightly to a tree.

Speaker 1 Now, you remember, Indy was the dog that Toya had taken to Wongetty Beach that previous afternoon for a walk. But there were some unusual aspects in terms of the way...

Speaker 1 She found Indy. She described her as being tied so tightly that Vanessa herself actually couldn't get the the lead untied from that tree and had to call Troy over for help.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because he kind of went south and then started walking back up, right? Because, you know, the car park they'd arrived at, I think, was the Southern Car Park.

Speaker 3 And so Wongetty Beach, as we've talked about, really long beach, car park at each end, northern southern car park, which kind of keeps getting mentioned.

Speaker 3 And yeah, he's gone down to the south, not very far to go, and started heading back up the beach. And yeah, he's helped untie Indy.
Is that what's happened?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's helped untie Indy. And then Vanessa's gone with Indy,

Speaker 1 you know, tried to see if the dog would lead her to anything they both said that the dog didn't actually make a sound they didn't hear any barking and Vanessa Gardiner said that Indy seemed happy to see someone that she knew

Speaker 3 and we heard as well from from both I think Vanessa and Troy about how Jack Gardner Vanessa's son built like a little teepee on the direction of Troy Cordingley sort of in line with where Indy was found so they could kind of mark where that is and

Speaker 1 where did he go from next I think Toya's boyfriend at the time Marco arrives right Yeah, we'd heard evidence from a few people that Marco, of course, was there the night before.

Speaker 1 He was the one who spotted Toy's car parked in that car park, sort of by the side of the road, made several phone calls and couldn't find her.

Speaker 1 Police had sent him back to his house in case Toya showed up there.

Speaker 1 You know, the evidence was that he stayed home and got what rest he could. He's returned to the beach after dawn breaks in the morning.

Speaker 1 And at one point, Marco Hardenreich, Toya's boyfriend, and Troy accordingly are walking on the sand, and they find a hat. It's actually a hat that belonged to Toya,

Speaker 1 and they recognised it as kind of being distinct and saying Tasmanian wilderness on it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right. And I mean, after this point, I think Troy continues further up the beach right.
We get this picture of it being quite a warm day,

Speaker 3 even though it's still early in the morning. You know, Troy's talking about how he needs to take a bit of a rest.
And I think he went and stood under a tree, didn't he?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's paused and taken some shelter under this tree. And

Speaker 1 kind of at the base of the beach, we saw some pictures of this area. And he's looked down and kind of noticed sand in a rather what he says is an unusual formation.

Speaker 1 I think he described it to the court as it didn't look like it had formed naturally.

Speaker 1 And Troy's evidence was that he kneeled down and kind of scraped away a little bit of this sand and then he felt his hand hit something.

Speaker 1 And he realised it was the foot of his daughter.

Speaker 3 God.

Speaker 3 He kind of reels back at this point, doesn't he? He said he reels back, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, Troy just said he reeled back and, I think, exclaimed, oh, God, and help.

Speaker 3 And I think, I mean, at this point, you know, the search was underway for Toya. So we had her family members.
We've heard that we've had her family members on the beach.

Speaker 3 You know, we've heard about Vanessa, her mum being there, Marco, the boyfriend, Troy, Toya's father, obviously, as well.

Speaker 3 And as well as that, there's some SES and some police. And we've actually heard from the police officer who kind of saw Troy exclaiming and his interaction with Troy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Dale Jepson gave evidence, I guess, seeing from a distance that reaction and immediately knowing he needed to go over there. And we saw a bit of his body worn camera vision at this point.

Speaker 1 And Dale Jepson gave evidence about, well,

Speaker 1 he went and touched

Speaker 1 the body that could be found in the sand just to check that. She wasn't just injured in that sand and kind of quickly realised the gravity of the situation and that she was in fact deceased.

Speaker 1 And, you know, he's then stepped back and I guess police

Speaker 1 procedures take effect there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the body worn footage that we saw from him of him kind of walking up, it would have been the moment that he saw Toya's body.

Speaker 3 You know, you see him walk into the sand and you see him get quite close down as he kneels down at the base of this basically grave, right?

Speaker 3 And he's asked here why, just checking to make sure that she wasn't in a position where she could be assisted, basically.

Speaker 3 And then you see him standing up and I think waving at the rescue helicopter that's flying around as well.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, really kind of taking us straight into that moment, seeing that moment unfold before us

Speaker 3 in the court of the last couple of days.

Speaker 3 We also have heard from Marco Heidenreich, Toy's boyfriend at the time. He's been a long time

Speaker 3 in the witness box over the last couple of days. What did we hear from him?

Speaker 1 Well, we heard a lot from him about his movements both the day of October the 21st and where he says he would have been while all this was unfolding, but also his experiences

Speaker 1 realising, he says, realizing she was missing, I guess, his conversations with different people during this time, both Toy's parents,

Speaker 1 police, his reactions the next day and the days that followed. They've asked him a lot of questions about things he said at the time,

Speaker 1 as well as where he actually was at all of these moments.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this kind of check, because he goes for a walk, I think, the day that Toy goes missing. He's up, is it Spring Creek, is that right? Going up to walk to Waterfalls with a friend.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the evidence is that he actually drove past Toya's car and Wongetty Beach on his way north towards Port Douglas, which was his hometown.

Speaker 1 We've heard evidence that he was catching up with a good friend of his, Joel Kuman.

Speaker 1 He was taking both of his dogs.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of dogs mentioned in this trial. Marco was taking his dogs, Jersey and Bentley, up to Spring Creek Falls for a hike.

Speaker 1 We've heard that there were some photographs taken of he and Joel, but a lot of the

Speaker 1 questioning centered on what happened on their way down from this hike as they were approaching the bottom when Marco heard a yelp and one of his dogs has gone missing and, well, in his words, just vanished.

Speaker 1 And they spent a bit of time looking for this dog, unsuccessfully. They borrowed some torches from friends.

Speaker 1 Weren't able to find the dog, so he's started to head back home towards Cairns, that's when he's he's spotted Toya's car interestingly we've also seen a bit of evidence and he was asked about it but they've shown some phone records he actually tried to call Toya many times this night

Speaker 3 wasn't able to get through yeah he said he was worried about his dog right you know he's calling Toya to basically let her know and he seemed quite upset by the dog going missing obviously he's then

Speaker 3 you know started the search for Toya as well realizing that she's missing calling police getting involved in that going to the beach as we've talked about

Speaker 3 and then also heading to the police station for questioning as well. And, you know, how that unfolded in the kind of weeks after

Speaker 3 Toya's death. Something that we really focused on was that sort of following period.

Speaker 3 There was a bit of a look at what he was doing around the day of Toya's death, but really kind of focused on in the cross-examination by the Defence Barrister Greg McGuire was kind of what happened in that aftermath with the police.

Speaker 3 Where was the Defence going with this?

Speaker 1 Well, we heard not just from Marco, who described some of these interactions, but we also heard from Detective Sergeant Adrian Wirth.

Speaker 1 Now, he was the first police officer, I guess, to question Marco Harden-Reich the following morning, the morning that Toya's body had been found.

Speaker 1 You'll recall we spoke about Marco and Troy being together when they found that hat

Speaker 1 belonging to Toya. Marco's then gone back to the police station around the time that Troy was finding

Speaker 1 that body in the sand.

Speaker 1 So Marco's arrived.

Speaker 1 The court heard he arrived at the police station about nine o'clock and had a conversation there with Adrian Wirth.

Speaker 1 It's actually there that Sergeant Wirth has essentially confirmed to Marco, we've found her body.

Speaker 1 And Marco's reaction, we heard, was rather visceral. He seemed a bit upset that he wasn't the first to find out.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he was really kind of, yeah, kind of complaining, I think it sounded like the way it was framed was his frustration that he, yeah, as you say, wasn't told. Other people knew before he knew.

Speaker 3 You know, the relationship between Marco and Adrian Worth was something they really did pull apart, especially the defense. You know, there's this conversation.

Speaker 3 We hear references to a transcript of Adrian Worth talking to Marco about how he believes his version of the story and we need to support that. How was that tested?

Speaker 3 How did that unfold in court when they were challenging that? They were pulling that apart.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Sergeant Worth has recorded these conversations covertly.

Speaker 1 So he's told the court that he doesn't believe Marco, Hart and Reich would would have had any reason to know these conversations were being recorded.

Speaker 1 It's important to remember that these were many conversations that took place pretty much over the course of that day and I think the next day or two, both at the police station and also at Marco Hardenreich's home.

Speaker 1 And really critical, at one point, Marco Hardenreich has mentioned to Sergeant Wirth, Oh, you might know my stepdad. He was a sergeant up here, Andrew Lurz.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Detective Sergeant Wirth has said, Oh, Lursey, yeah, I remember him. He was up here.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the questioning from Greg Maguire, the defense barrister, really centered on, well, was it, you know, you felt it was appropriate then that you continued with this conversation and investigation into Mr.

Speaker 1 Haydenreich, even though you knew his stepdad.

Speaker 1 Detective Sergeant Wirth said, well, I knew of him as a police officer in the far north, but we weren't social. And he's really...

Speaker 1 put this down to a lot of

Speaker 3 that he was trying to build rapport.

Speaker 1 Marco was being cooperative. He volunteered his phone for the the police to download all the data.
He agreed to having his mouth swabbed for forensics without complaining.

Speaker 1 He let them take his car and do some searches there.

Speaker 1 But yeah, interesting, some of the flavor of the conversation that was being unpicked here. I recall one exchange where

Speaker 1 Detective Sergeant Wirth

Speaker 1 We heard that he told Marco, oh, normally when you know we've got to search a house, normally we tear people's houses to bits when we do this, but we won't need to do that to you.

Speaker 1 And I I guess Detective Sergeant Worth having to explain some of his methods under cross-examination in court, saying, well,

Speaker 1 I had no reason to believe that he was anything other than a person of interest.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 in these kind of homicides, we have to look at the domestic partner first, but there was never any reason for him to believe, he says,

Speaker 1 for the suspicion on Marco to go any further than that.

Speaker 3 I mean, the way we're talking about this evidence really doesn't do justice to the way it it was conducted by Defence Barrister Greg Maguire because, you know, we're making this sound like quite a kind of cordial interaction when really in the courtroom, Greg Maguire, for lack of a better word, really went Adrian Wirth.

Speaker 3 It was, yeah,

Speaker 1 quite a stern line of questioning, particularly at the point where he said, well, and you thought it was appropriate to continue your investigation, to which, yeah, Sergeant Wirth replied, absolutely.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it was quite incredible because we even got to the point where the prosecutor, Nathan Crane, was objecting to the way this cross-examination was being done.

Speaker 3 He wasn't objecting to the questions being asked or the star. I think he even said, you know,

Speaker 3 my learned friend can, you know, sort of roam around the courtroom and shout all he wants, but he's not letting the witness finish the question, kind of, you know, pulling him up basically in that moment.

Speaker 3 And yeah, really, really interesting to see all that unfold in court.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a bit of a reaction there to, I guess, some repeated questions where, you know, the same line being pursued frequently over the course of a short space of time.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I don't know how I would have stood up in that kind of cross-examination, but yeah, Adrian Wirth, yeah, really just sort of, you know, calmly quite explained what he was doing and all of that during the cross-examination.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because as the interaction between Sergeant Wirth and Marco Hardinright continued, I think at one point he's actually offered to help look for Marco's missing dog up at Spring Creek.

Speaker 1 Dog was eventually found. By the time Adrian Worth got there on that Tuesday morning, some backpackers had found the dog, and Sergeant Wirth mentioned speaking to those witnesses.

Speaker 1 But he really offered,

Speaker 1 I guess, his explanation for why he interacted with Marco Heidenreich in this way was really around saying that his policing experience and life in general has taught him that you generally catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

Speaker 1 And I guess he's spoken there about that report-building exercise, but there are other elements that the defence was questioning too.

Speaker 1 We heard that during this process, the police photographed Marco's body for injuries. He had a small cut to his foot, which we could see on some photographs that were shown to the court.

Speaker 1 And the explanation for that has been given by both Marco Hardenreich and the police, that that was a cut that he got or a scratch that he got while he was looking for Jersey up at Spring Creek.

Speaker 1 But it was a little unusual in that when they got the government medical officer to check that injury

Speaker 1 they actually did that at Marco's house rather than making Marco go into the clinic, which we heard from that doctor, Dr. Leslie Griffiths, now retired, who said

Speaker 1 that was a rarity. It's not how it usually works in his experience.

Speaker 3 Because there was something that really, really curious that happened during the questioning of Marco Hayden-Reich. The defense barrister, Greg McGruire,

Speaker 3 was talking him through statements. He was cross-examining him, and then he made references to what Marco Haydenreich had said at the other trial or at another trial.

Speaker 3 And that really pricked up my ears.

Speaker 3 And then at the end of the day, I think this was the end of Tuesday, Justice Crowley then taking a moment at the end of the proceedings to kind of clarify a few points with the jury.

Speaker 3 What was he talking about there?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so you're referring to some cross-examination where Greg Maguire was putting a proposition to Marco about something that he'd previously been asked and said.

Speaker 1 All we heard was that it was, quote, in another trial. And at the end of the day,

Speaker 1 the judge took the moment to tell the jury, look, you've heard that there was a reference to another trial.

Speaker 1 Essentially taking them back to his instructions at the outset that, you know, you're to put that out of your mind. The fact that there has been another trial is not relevant to your work.

Speaker 1 Please don't go and research what it was about or what was said.

Speaker 1 And you're not to take, you know, the fact that there's been another trial isn't to be taken into account in their deliberations at all. They, of course, haven't been told what that other trial was

Speaker 1 or what its context was. So yeah, very, very limited, I guess, mentions of another trial, but the jury very quickly told to put it out of their minds.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and you know, on this pod, we can only talk about what the jury's heard. So, you know, kind of conveying what has been communicated to them in that moment.

Speaker 3 And, I mean, speaking of Justice Crowley as well,

Speaker 3 something I've noticed in this trial, the pace of it. We have been rocketing along, Chris.

Speaker 3 We start at 10, we go all the way through till 1, an hour and 15-minute break, and then all the way again through until 40.

Speaker 3 No morning, no afternoon break, really hooking through a witness, one witness of initiatives, the next one straight in. It really feels like it's moving quite quickly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we had one break, short break yesterday at the request of the jury, but

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 quite often there will be a 15-minute break in the morning and afternoon, but there's been a lot of reading because

Speaker 1 we actually got to quite a substantial volume of text messages and Facebook messenger messages yesterday between Marco Hardenreich and Toy accordingly. Almost a year's worth from January 2018 to

Speaker 1 the date of this incident, October 21st, 2018.

Speaker 1 Whether that constitutes a break, I'm not sure. It's a lot of reading for the jury to do.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is, I mean, yeah, say we've been flying along, and then at the end of Wednesday afternoon, there was this moment where we just had these kind of like dossiers put on the overhead projector, and there's an overhead projector used in this trial to show documents to the jury.

Speaker 3 So they're physical documents that are at the bar table. They're put on this overhead projector, and it takes me right back to high school, basically, which was quite nostalgic.

Speaker 3 But yeah, they're basically just like flipping through pages for, I think it was an hour and a half, right, Chris?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and quite hard to read if you're not on the jury because each juror has their own individual little screen in front of them, but the rest of us in the courtroom don't.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the flavor of some of these messages,

Speaker 1 perhaps typical of some relationships.

Speaker 1 Marco asking Toya, do we have any cocoa powder?

Speaker 1 At one point, Toya saying to Marco, I love you so much. I hope you're having a good day.

Speaker 1 Other messages, I'll come with you tonight. Am I paying for ergonom or Telstra? If you don't live in Queensland, Ergon is a power bill.

Speaker 1 Are you working tomorrow? And can you please get some dog food on your way home?

Speaker 1 The flavour of the relationship between Toy Cordingley and Marco Hardenreich, we haven't heard any kind of submissions made on that or cross-examination of any witnesses about what the messages go to.

Speaker 1 So at the moment, it's kind of been left to the jury just to read and take in.

Speaker 1 I guess they draw their own conclusions until we hear more about what all that means.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, it was a really kind of interesting moment in court getting all of of that seeing it. I couldn't read them from where I was.

Speaker 3 So I just kind of checked out and basically helped plan the set. So glad you were able to take some notes on that, Chris.
I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 We have been getting a lot of questions sent into the case of abc.net.au.

Speaker 3 I really appreciate hearing from you. Love answering questions.
And yeah, there's been an avalanche basically since we published our last episode, Chris.

Speaker 3 So very keen to dive into some of them and answer some questions that we've been sent. I want to start with a question here from Georgina.

Speaker 3 Georgina writes, Hi, Stocky and Chris, thank you so much for covering Toya's trial.

Speaker 3 I've been following this case since he first went missing and for her body to be found by her own dad, that was beyond heartbreaking. I questioned, you mentioned this is a circumstantial case.

Speaker 3 Is that completely accurate when there is DNA evidence linking the accused to the crime?

Speaker 1 Well, yes, in a nutshell, it's still circumstantial. A couple of reasons for that.
Circumstantial means that the prosecution's relying on a combination of different evidence to

Speaker 1 make the case that the accused was the person responsible.

Speaker 1 Recall there were no eyewitnesses. No one's going to come to court and say, I saw him kill her.

Speaker 1 And I guess DNA is one tool or one thread in the narrative that will link

Speaker 1 in the prosecution's version, will link Raj Wing De Singh to that scene.

Speaker 1 It's hard to talk in depth about the DNA evidence because we actually haven't heard any of it yet. It's only been mentioned in both the openings

Speaker 1 for prosecution and defense.

Speaker 1 But we've heard a bit about where they're going to say the strengths and weaknesses of that lie because the prosecution has spoken about these profiles that were found on a stick in some logs at the grave site.

Speaker 1 I think one sample was deemed to be 3.7 billion times more likely to have come from Rajwinder Singh than someone else.

Speaker 1 But the defence is talking about potentially other people who may have contributed to some of these profiles.

Speaker 1 Haven't heard all of the DNA evidence yet.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, Chris.
I mean, you're talking about indirect evidence.

Speaker 3 What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 What is direct evidence, I guess?

Speaker 1 Your direct evidence is, I guess, someone coming to court and saying,

Speaker 1 I saw that man do this. There isn't going to be, or a weapon being found, for instance.
We've already been told that that's not going to be the prosecution case in this trial.

Speaker 1 So we're not going to hear that kind of direct evidence that places him there. Some trials are about other things like intent.
You know, there's no dispute about the person who

Speaker 1 committed the actions. But this is really a whodunit.
It's all about identity,

Speaker 1 and that's why it's a circumstantial case because we're pulling from these different threads of evidence and the jury is being asked to consider them all in combination and reach a conclusion from there.

Speaker 3 Great. Thank you, Chris.
Wonderful question, Georgina as well. Thank you for writing to us.
The case of at abc.net.au. Chris, another one here from Bella in Melbourne.

Speaker 3 Bella writes, Hi, stocking, Chris, longtime listener and fan of the pod and current law student. So it's right up my alley.
Have a quick question.

Speaker 3 You mentioned that Toya was walking her dog indy along the beach when the murder took place has the prosecution mentioned anything about what might have happened to the dog she was found with nothing but a selfie stick so no leash no dog bags no paw prints

Speaker 1 yeah we actually have heard a bit about the dog we know now that indy is a tibetan mastiff husky cross and there are a few questions about how she asked of marco hardenreich by the police about how he thought Indy might have reacted to a, I guess, a random person.

Speaker 1 It was a little bit inconclusive about what he said.

Speaker 1 We've heard that Indy fought at home with one of Marco's dogs, Jersey, but he said in evidence that she'd never been aggressive towards any human.

Speaker 1 So Indy was tied really tightly to that tree, you might recall, that Vanessa Gardner, Toya's mum, had to get Troy accordingly, her dad, to come over and untie it. And then Vanessa has taken that dog.

Speaker 1 We heard evidence from her that she thought that perhaps Indy might lead her to Toya or to something of significance on the beach and that Indy kind of walked her into the scrub a little bit.

Speaker 1 Indy actually then went with Marco Hardenreich we heard to the police station that morning. He took Indy with him to the police station when he had that first conversation with Adrienne Worth.

Speaker 1 The court heard that the dog, Indy actually went into a kind of the dog squad pen at that point while they interviewed Marco and then

Speaker 1 at some point the police have realized this is actually the dog from the crime scene and this was the lead that

Speaker 1 she was tied up with. So they've

Speaker 1 not immediately but they have at some point kind of bagged that lead and and and done some forensic testing on it and that's the that's as much as we've heard so far but I expect we'll hear more dogs have been quite important to this trial and just some curiosity we saw some photographs tendered to the court and shown as exhibits of Marco and Toya's home and one of the pictures was of a bookshelf we've already heard that they met working together at Paws and Claws Animal Shelter in Port Douglas where they were both

Speaker 1 volunteering. And a lot of dog-related books on this bookshelf, and yeah, some displayed at the top.
And yeah, Marco,

Speaker 1 quite concerned about his cats not getting out when everyone got to the home that night in that kind of frenzy to try and find out where Toya was.

Speaker 1 So a lot of animals, yeah, playing roles in this trial, kind of the background to their relationship together.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's been interesting hearing all about it, and I've appreciated all the questions we've been sent to the case of at abc.net.au, not just from Bella.

Speaker 3 Tegan was also asking the breed of Indy as well, which you've covered off, Chris, so I appreciate that. And yeah, a number of others.
We actually don't know what has happened to Indy.

Speaker 3 We haven't heard where Indy is at the moment, but if we get any indication of that,

Speaker 3 we'll bring that to you, along with any other detail around dogs that comes up in this trial and just general detail that comes up from this trial as well.

Speaker 3 If you have questions about anything that is happening in this case, please get in touch. The caseov at abc.net.au.
I really appreciate hearing from you.

Speaker 3 Chris, where are we going to next? What's happening now?

Speaker 1 We're hearing from Detective Sergeant Gary Hall, who we've heard was one of the lead investigators on this case.

Speaker 1 And through him, the prosecution's presenting a lot of this kind of factual evidence around CCTV footage and some of the phone records.

Speaker 1 So we're now starting to get a lot of that material that police compiled, I guess, placing people at different points during that day.

Speaker 1 And I expect we'll be getting more of that as the trial goes on.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Thank you, Chris.
We'll be back in your feed on Tuesday next week. Make sure you grab yourself the ABC listener app, it is the best way to listen to the case of.

Speaker 3 And if you're listening to the case of using a different podcast platform, please leave us a rating and review. It's what makes it easier for other people to find this podcast and this story.

Speaker 3 So, if you think this is an important story that more people need to hear, leaving us a rating and a review on whatever podcast service you're using is the best way to help spread the word, as well as, of course, popping it in your group chats, sharing it with your friends, telling people about it.

Speaker 3 So, if you can do that, that'll make it easy for more people to hear this story. And we'll be back in your feed on Tuesday.

Speaker 3 The case of Toy's murder is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. It's reported by Chris Tester and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.
Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson.

Speaker 3 And a big thank you to senior lawyer, our legal queen, Jasmine Sims, for her legal advice, to the Queensland Newsroom, and to Audio Studios manager, Eric George.

Speaker 3 This episode was produced on the land of the Gimoi, Wallabara, Yedinji people.

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