Easey Street Murders: Conflicting memories as witnesses give evidence

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Speaker 1 We are halfway through the Easy Street Murders Committal, and we've been given a real insight into the world of Melbourne policing in the 1970s and also a hint at the other men that the Defence wants us thinking about.

Speaker 1 I'm Stephen Stockwell. Welcome to the case case of the Easy Street Murders.
Police said the killings were the worst that encountered.

Speaker 2 The crime baffled investigators and gripped the state.

Speaker 1 The Easy Street murders have always been a priority for Victoria Police.

Speaker 2 After a breakthrough arrest, Victoria Police are closer to solving one of the state's oldest cold cases.

Speaker 1 There is simply no expiry date on crimes that are as brutal as this.

Speaker 1 We had the second day of Perry Grombless's committal hearing on Thursday last week. I was there with ABC reporter Alexandra Alvaro.

Speaker 1 And Alex, it was really interesting hearing about some of the other men that kind of appeared in the frame at the time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there were statements and interviews conducted with some of these other men, but nothing substantial really came from it, we heard.

Speaker 2 And one police witness put it as, we never had any good suspects. I wish we had.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. Looking forward to exploring that more in this episode.
But before we get there, can you wrap up the second day of this committal hearing for us in 60 seconds?

Speaker 2 We heard from a few police witnesses. The first was the first officer to attend that scene on Easy Street.
He was alerted to that through his car radio, to a disturbance on Easy Street.

Speaker 2 Another officer from the homicide squad we also heard from, he actually took a statement and a knife from Perry Korumblis, according to his diary, but he didn't really have much memory of it himself.

Speaker 2 We heard from Alona Miklos Vari. She was one of the neighbours who discovered the bodies alongside her housemate Janet, who we heard about from the last episode.

Speaker 2 And then, lastly, we heard from Adrian Donahue from the homicide squad, and through him, we heard a police interview which was played to the court.

Speaker 2 This was police interviewing Barry Woodard, who we also heard about last time. His denials, police were asking him about whether he had carried out these murders.

Speaker 1 Yeah, some of the insights we got, Alex, into the way that policing was carried out in the 70s was really interesting.

Speaker 1 You know, not just the interview that we heard played with Barry Woodard, but yeah, some of the other tactics, some of the other questioning, some of the other recordings that may or may not have been taken at the time.

Speaker 1 But we'll get to that later in this episode.

Speaker 1 Alex, we finished our last episode with one of the neighbours of 147 Easy Street, the house that Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were murdered in in 1977.

Speaker 1 That neighbour lived at 149 Easy Street, just next door. They shared a party wall.
It was Janet Powell.

Speaker 1 And then, Alex, on Thursday last week, we heard from her housemates, Alona, telling her story, recalling her memory of finding the bodies in that day in January 1977. What did we hear?

Speaker 2 So Alona Miklosvari, she was the neighbour, as you say, and her evidence was that she climbed the fence of the Easy Street address. She went into the house through the back.

Speaker 2 She saw Susan Bartlett's body from around the back of the house. She also saw Suzanne Armstrong's body from the hallway.
Her body was in the bedroom.

Speaker 2 And she said that she also saw Greg Armstrong, the baby, but she doesn't remember him looking distressed as her housemate did.

Speaker 2 And she also said that they didn't take him from the house, which is what Janet Powell had said.

Speaker 2 So her kind of information was a little bit conflicting to what we heard from her housemate the day before.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you'd heard from Janet Powell that they had gone out the front of the door of their house.

Speaker 1 They'd gone through the laneway and into the house in a different way, which is really interesting.

Speaker 1 Also heard from Janet Powell that she'd taken the baby, and she was quite specific as well in her description of taking Gregory, who was one and a half at the time, of him kind of hanging onto her like a koala.

Speaker 1 And then we hear from Alona that... She left him there for a policewoman, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, she was saying that she really remembered it a different way. And she also walked herself back from some of the statements that she'd made to police.

Speaker 2 In some of the other witnesses we've heard, they've said, you know, I don't remember that, but if it's in my statement, it's true. Alona was a little bit different to that.

Speaker 2 She said, no, I don't remember that. And this is how I remember it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's going to be really interesting. We spoke about this in our last episode, just the kind of the memory game that's being played through all of this as well.

Speaker 1 You know, now two versions of this account from, you know, one from January, one from Alona, you know, kind of slight variations in them as well, which is is really interesting.

Speaker 1 And, I mean, thinking about that scene at the house, as well as, you know, Alona's account on Thursday last week, we also heard from the first police officer on the scene as well.

Speaker 1 So the first responder to this murder scene in 1997. This is a guy called Gary Looker.
How did he describe it?

Speaker 2 Gary said that, and his evidence was quite vivid for me, like it really played out like a movie in my mind.

Speaker 2 He said that he also entered the house through the back. He'd gone around the front, knocked, called out, that didn't work.
He was with a colleague and they went through the back of the house

Speaker 2 and he remembers when he saw the bodies. So he's seen the body of Susan Bartlett down the hallway and then he's gone into the bathroom and he says it's there that he saw what appeared to be blood.

Speaker 2 in or next to the the plug of the bath. And he said that that blood looked like it had been watered down and it led led him to believe that someone had perhaps washed in that bath.

Speaker 1 Right. And what did he do then?

Speaker 2 So it was at that point that he realised it was a crime scene so he pulled out his gun and he said it was his and his colleague's job to essentially just check there was no one else in the house which there wasn't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did he stay for long? He didn't.

Speaker 2 And the reason he he didn't stay for long is because he said he didn't want to contaminate the crime scene. So he says that he has this memory of him and his

Speaker 2 colleague coming out of the house. He said that they peered over the back fence.
He said he didn't remember why he did that, but that's what they did. And they alerted the homicide squad.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Something that, you know, sort of surprises me, I guess, a bit with this is how vividly he seems to have remembered this.

Speaker 1 I mean, we've just spent all this time in our last episode talking about how, you know, there's these kind of, you know, things that people aren't remembering or they can't recall.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, Gary's come in and he describes this incredibly vivid scene of like walking through this house and what he was thinking in certain spaces and things like that.

Speaker 1 This seems just, it just seems so vivid.

Speaker 2 It does. But remember, a lot of it's also coming from his statement as well that he's made to police.

Speaker 2 And so it's being put to him during cross-examination and then he's agreeing or disagreeing with what's put to him.

Speaker 1 Right, yeah. And I mean, I guess this is an interesting point as well, right?

Speaker 1 Because, you know, we talked about this a little bit in the other episodes we've made is that, you know, most of the time these witnesses are getting they're kind of like when they're being you know examined in chief by the prosecution they're basically just being asked to check if their statements are accurate or not and then they're kind of given a thumbs up and then it's in cross-examination that we kind of hear these details and these stories because the defence barrister Dermot Dan Casey is kind of reading things back to them and then checking it against their memory, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and asking them to expand on it and asking them if that's true in terms of what they believe to be true now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. It's yeah, it's so fascinating.

Speaker 1 I was expecting to go into this and just be so confused and just hear people talking about these documents we wouldn't see, but the way it's all being tested by Dermot Dan KC kind of pulls it apart a bit more as well.

Speaker 1 And we've also learnt, Alex, throughout this, I mean, we had, you know, Gary Looker, one of the police officers there, and then we've also had another one of the investigators, some of the homicide detectives at this committal giving evidence about what they recall from this investigation at the time.

Speaker 1 I mean, what have we learnt from some of them?

Speaker 2 Well, we also heard from Douglas Carroll. He was from the homicide squad, and he told the court that he actually took a statement from Perry Korumblis back in the day.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 he didn't remember much of this. In fact, he didn't really remember it at all.
But he was really relying on his notes, contemporaneous notes from his diary at the time.

Speaker 2 So the diary proved really useful because he was able to kind of be prompted by it.

Speaker 2 He said that

Speaker 2 in the days after the women's bodies were found, he took a statement from Mr.

Speaker 2 Korumblis who had come into the police station and presented a friend who it sounded like was presented as an alibi really for what he was doing at the time that they believed that the murders took place.

Speaker 2 And it was also put to him that he had taken a knife. from Mr.
Korumblis and we heard about this knife earlier in the committal hearing.

Speaker 2 He said he didn't really remember what he did with it, but he was relying on what the process would have been at the time that he took it from him and then took it to the back of the police station and stowed it there in a way that would have been consistent with what was done at the time, but he didn't really have independent memory of it.

Speaker 1 Right. Was there anyone else that he spoke to?

Speaker 2 Yes. So he did speak to Susan Bartlett's acquaintance, Ross Hammond, and he was identified as the owner of a footprint that was found on Susan Bartlett's bed.

Speaker 2 Again, he doesn't remember speaking to him. It's only through notes in his diary that he was able to recall, but

Speaker 2 he says that he took a statement from Ross Hammond. Right.

Speaker 1 And there was something I noticed in the committal hearing yesterday, actually from both days of the kind of first part of this committal hearing for Perry Corumbalis, the guy that's been extraditedly brought to Australia to

Speaker 1 face charges of murder and rape in relation to this crime in the 1970s.

Speaker 1 Is that there's other men that are kind of around the house at the same kind of time that the murders happen and before the bodies are discovered?

Speaker 1 Because there's like, it sounds like there's a bit of a crew kind of forming. That's right.

Speaker 2 So also there's three that we've heard of really. So there's Ross Hammond, who, as we said, was identified as the owner of that footprint by police.

Speaker 2 Then there's the Woodards, so Barry and Henry. So remember, Barry and Henry are the brothers who left the note in the kitchen after

Speaker 2 Suzanne failed to pick up the phone.

Speaker 2 And then there's John Grant, who we also heard about.

Speaker 2 He is a colleague of one of the women's neighbours. So he's one of Alona's colleagues.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay, cool.
And John Grant was at, you know, kind of around basically Easy Street because he was hanging out with Alona.

Speaker 1 We've got Hammond who at some point went into the house because there's the footprint on the bedspread. And then we've got Woodard, who we know was around the back of the house leaving the note.

Speaker 1 Can you tell me a bit more about who these guys are though?

Speaker 2 So Ross Hammond was introduced in the prosecution's opening as an associate of Susan Bartlett.

Speaker 2 And as you say, it's believed he was in the house potentially between when the murders happened and the discovery of the bodies.

Speaker 2 Then one of the police witnesses who we've heard from, Adrian Donahue, says that he was never interviewed as a possible suspect. He gave an explanation and we accepted it.
So that's Ross Hammond.

Speaker 1 Right, okay.

Speaker 2 And then there was John Grant. He was a colleague of Alona's, a fellow journalist.

Speaker 2 She said that he was having trouble at home at the time and so she'd given him the key to her house in case he needed to stay over.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And I mean, while Alona has given John Grant a key to her house, he doesn't sound like the nicest dude in the world.

Speaker 2 Well, she'd previously given a statement to police, according to defense, saying that he could become aggressive after a few drinks, that he'd been aggressive towards her, and that he was also the suspect in another murder.

Speaker 2 And it was put to her that at the time, she had told police that he was capable of murder. But she walked that back when she gave evidence.

Speaker 2 She kind of said, I don't remember saying that and I don't believe that to be true.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.
And I mean, Alona was a journalist in the 70s. She was working, I think, the Truth newspaper as a sports reporter.
John was there as a crime journalist as well, I think. Yes.

Speaker 1 And I mean, something that stuck with me from the evidence that we heard on Thursday last week was

Speaker 1 Alona, you know, Alona being pointed to a reference she made of John Grant saying that, you know, he, you know, after a few drinks, he wouldn't think twice about propositioning women and, you saying sort of kind of awful things and all of that.

Speaker 1 And then her saying, well, yeah, but also I worked with male journalists in the 70s. They were kind of all like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess she was asked, like, is that in keeping with the man you knew? And she said, well, it was in keeping with most of the men I knew.

Speaker 1 Oh, dear. Well, look, you know, I like to think that journalists have come a long way since then.
And, you know, maybe she would think differently if she still worked in the space now.

Speaker 1 And then we also had Barry Woodart. He was one of the other people that the police interviewed at the time as well, right, Alex? And he was considered kind of, it seems like a suspect.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he gave evidence that police were really interrogating him about whether it was him who had carried out these murders. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 And I mean, this is Perry Karumblis' committal hearing. Why are we hearing so much about these other men?

Speaker 1 It's hard to say at the time where defence is heading with this questioning, but they have said while we were hearing openings that they would be exploring uh alternative suspects who were around at the time right okay cool okay that gives some useful context as to why i mean this is all dermotted and casey kind of leading this question asking all of these things so that's where it's coming from the prosecution like we said earlier just kind of getting these statements confirmed and then moving on a little bit of re-examination at the end to clarify points of things they've said things witnesses have said but yeah not not a huge amount from them and i mean you know alex talking about barry woodard he was someone who was, yeah, interviewed by police at the time.

Speaker 1 And, you know, we know this because, you know, not just because it's been said in court, but we heard the audio of the interview.

Speaker 2 We did, which was so fascinating.

Speaker 2 Essentially, this was played during one of the homicide squad detectives' evidence. And there was a bit of a dispute as to whether that witness was the voice that we were hearing in that interview.

Speaker 2 But we got to hear some of that, if I can call it, interrogation from police to Barry Woodard. It was, you know, it was put to him, you know, you killed these two girls.
I don't care what you say.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 police accused him of crying for a solicitor.

Speaker 2 He asked if Barry, you can hear him in the interview saying, can I make a phone call? And officers saying to him, oh, dear Margaret, this is his sister.

Speaker 2 Dear Margaret, what's Margaret going to do for you? Why do you want a solicitor for Fallow?

Speaker 2 So we got to hear a little bit of that back and forth between some unidentified police and Barry, that witness.

Speaker 1 Yeah, really, really interesting. And, you know, talking about the insights into the, you know, the policing at the time and how this work was done, we also heard from Donahue,

Speaker 1 one of the homicide detectives,

Speaker 1 about a neighbour of

Speaker 1 the women, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, who he'd interviewed

Speaker 1 following the murders. Now, this isn't Janet and Lona, who lived on the party wall at 149.
This is a different neighbour,

Speaker 1 describing her as quite a difficult witness as he was talking through that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is Ms. Coventry.

Speaker 2 It was put to

Speaker 2 Adrian Donoghue that he had spoken to her at the time and

Speaker 2 it was put to him that she had told

Speaker 2 police that she had seen a man.

Speaker 2 dancing with one of the women, that there was Greek music playing. This was her account, apparently.

Speaker 2 But what Adrian Donahue said around that was that she wasn't really reliable, essentially. She told us a lot of stuff,

Speaker 2 but none of it was really useful.

Speaker 1 There was, I think he was recording that on a tape recorder or something as he went in as well.

Speaker 1 And, you know, questioning by, questioned by Dermot Dan about whether or not that was common practice at the time.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think, I'm not sure if Adrian was just trying to cover himself, but he was like, oh, no, we used to do that sometimes. It's just how it was done.

Speaker 1 And then a bit of confusion as well around what was a police interview, what was a statement.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Really, really interesting back and forth.
And I mean,

Speaker 1 when he was talking, something I noticed in that was Magistrate Sonnet, who's the magistrate overseeing this committal hearing,

Speaker 1 he kept kind of not interjecting, well, no, interjecting. He would ask questions of the witness.
Dermot Dan would ask a question. The witness may answer.

Speaker 1 And then we would see Magistrate Sonnet kind of jump in and go, oh, well, what about this? What about this? And then ask kind of a chain of questions in a row.

Speaker 1 And this was something that really surprised me because I'm used to kind of, you know, basically the trial of Aaron Patterson where Justice Beale kept so quiet through most of it, just listening and then occasionally asking for clarification.

Speaker 1 But magistrates on it are really quite involved in the question. Is that normal for a committal hearing?

Speaker 2 Sometimes. I mean, the magistrate is the person who in the end needs to make a decision about whether this will go to trial.

Speaker 2 So I can only assume that those interjections are kind of clarifying things for their own information or putting things to the witness because they think that that needs to also be on the record.

Speaker 2 So it's not uncommon for judges or magistrates to kind of make an interjection as we're hearing from a witness.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I suppose because, you know, if they think about the trial of Aaron Patterson, you know, the points that Justice Peer would interject would be so the jury could kind of understand what's going on.

Speaker 1 And I mean, you know, there's no jury in this. It is just magistrate sonnet.
So he's just making sure he understands or gets his stuff on the record. So, yeah, that's a great insight, Alex.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 You know, we've just had the, you know, we've had two days of this committal hearing now. We now move into kind of a bit of a break.

Speaker 1 What happens from here?

Speaker 2 Well, we'll be back in late November. There are three more days set aside to hear the rest of this committal hearing.

Speaker 2 And then after that, it's likely that Magistrate Brett Sonnet will take a little bit of time to consider his decision before handing it down.

Speaker 1 Right. And he's sitting here basically assessing whether there's enough evidence for this to be taken to a trial, right? Am I thinking about that correctly?

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Great, cool.
So he'll hear it all. We've had a couple of days here.
We'll have those other days in late November.

Speaker 1 And then we'll basically find out from him at some stage after that if we go into a trial. Thank you, Alex.

Speaker 1 We asked for questions in our episode the other day, the case of at abc.net.au, and you have obliged.

Speaker 1 We have had a small avalanche of emails into the case of inbox, and I am very much looking forward to some of them.

Speaker 1 Some really great insights and some things that I realized I had been taking for granted knowing. So

Speaker 1 I want to start here with a question from May, a Melburnian listening in from London. May writes, hi, Alex and Stocky.

Speaker 1 In your recent app, you mentioned Barry and his brother left a note in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 Can you tell us more about the layout of the house and how a note could be left in the kitchen if Barry and his brother did not go into the house and discover the unfortunate scene?

Speaker 2 So we've heard that this house was kind of an old workman's cottage.

Speaker 2 So I can kind of describe the layout as I've heard it described in court. But at the back of the house, and this is where some of the witnesses say they entered the house through,

Speaker 2 is the kitchen and the dining area. So that is where the note was left.
And then there's also a hallway that goes down the side of the house.

Speaker 2 And this is where I believe the bedrooms and the bathroom come off.

Speaker 2 And your question about Barry not discovering the scene, even though he was, or at least his brother was in the kitchen leaving that note, is an interesting one because it was actually put to Barry at the time.

Speaker 2 You know, you went into the kitchen and you didn't go further and you told your brother not to go further because you knew the women were inside dead, which of course he denied.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wonderful question, May. Thank you, Alex.
We have another one here from Virginia, from Western Australia. Virginia writes, Hello, case of team.
I've been listening to your podcast since inception.

Speaker 1 I have a burning question around the Easy Street case. My heart and thoughts have been with a child of Suzanne Armstrong that was apparently in the house at the time of the murders.

Speaker 1 My question is: as that child would now be an adult, are they present in the process?

Speaker 1 And if known, are they able to access early memories to be able to offer any input into the trial on behalf of their deceased mother?

Speaker 1 I understand they were very young at the time, but know that sometimes later in life, these pre-verbal memories can resurface.

Speaker 2 Gregory Armstrong was about one and a half at the time of these murders, and he's led a very private life since.

Speaker 2 In looking back at our archives and our reporting, we did do a story about Gregory in the years after the murders. He was raised raised in the country by his auntie Gail

Speaker 2 at one point. And the reporter asked Gail at the time,

Speaker 2 you know, you're pretty honest about talking about these murders in Gregory's presence. And to that, she said,

Speaker 2 well, you know, I don't think we should lie about it. I'd prefer he heard it from me rather than anybody else, you know, at school or whatever.
So

Speaker 2 I did find that report and I thought it was interesting, but really we haven't heard much from Gregory and I don't know if he will turn up in a potential trial.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Thank you, Alex.
Wonderful question, Virginia, as well.

Speaker 1 And I mean, you know, when we're thinking about the impact of crimes like this, you know, the deaths of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett have been felt for a very long time, certainly without a resolution at this stage.

Speaker 1 And yeah, Gregory Armstrong, you know, a child at the time this happened, still having to live with this as he grows old as well.

Speaker 1 So yeah, worth remembering the impact that these crimes have as we're talking about them.

Speaker 1 Alex, another question here from Sean from Melbourne. He writes, in the latest episode, Alex talks of the media lawyering up to have information released to the public.
What does that actually entail?

Speaker 1 Who funds the lawyers? Is there a press association or pool money to support this? Or is it up to the individual outlets to decide what to challenge?

Speaker 2 I love this question. So there's not really a pool as such.
It's a little bit more informal.

Speaker 2 So when a suppression order is applied for or made by a court, journalists will decide to challenge it and usually the basis of that is that we think it should be made public.

Speaker 2 We believe it to be in the public interest.

Speaker 2 So sometimes you know it might be one media outlet that chooses to do it but more likely than not usually there's a few of us from multiple different outlets that want this information out there and so we'll band together and we'll hire one lawyer between us who will fight for the right to publish the information rather than having us all of us having representation from various different lawyers who are going to be making similar arguments.

Speaker 2 We'll just have one representing us all.

Speaker 2 So no, it's not a press association or a union making the decision. It's up to individual media organisations.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank you, Alex. And I mean, you sort of have answered this in there anyway.
But I mean, Amy's also been in touch. We've got several emails about this.

Speaker 1 Amy asked, how do we decide what we challenge?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I think it's important to say that sometimes when there's a suppression in place, the media probably agrees that it should be in place anyway.

Speaker 2 When you've got, you know, names of people who are vulnerable, children, child witnesses,

Speaker 2 there's good reason for some of those things to be suppressed. It's only really if we see something as being in the public interest and that we really want out there for our audience

Speaker 2 that we would challenge.

Speaker 1 Yeah, great. Thank you, Alex.
Appreciate it. Yeah, it's a really interesting point.
And I mean, this this is something that I,

Speaker 1 you know, kind of got an insight into quite early on in my education of the court process at the beginning of the trial of Aaron Patterson, where there were conversations around suppressions there and the fights we had.

Speaker 1 And these were all questions I was asking then. How do we decide who we do it? How does it work?

Speaker 1 And I had all of them answered, and then I forgot that everyone else doesn't know that, which is why I love the case of inbox. I love getting all your emails.

Speaker 1 If you want to get in touch, there's something you're wondering about. There are no dumb questions, just arrogant, mean people that make you feel silly.
But we will never do that to you.

Speaker 1 So please get in touch. The case of at abc.net.au.

Speaker 1 And speaking of arrogant people that make you feel silly, I do actually have a criticism of the KSOB inbox because despite my not-so-subtle request in our last episode, it seems that the KSOB listeners are not dog people.

Speaker 1 No one has inquired on what dog was found out the front of 147 Easy Street by Janet and Alona the week of the murders. We must have cat people listening, Alex.
So what can you tell us?

Speaker 2 Janet says that it it was a Beagle Cross, and she described the colours. She said it was white, black, and brown.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Great.
You've satiated my curiosity. I really appreciate you spending this time with us over the last couple of weeks.
You've had given us fantastic accounts of what's unfolded in court.

Speaker 1 We'll be back in November when this starts to unfold again. Can we have you back then?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Wonderful. Thank you.
You're always very welcome. We are going to drag ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown into the studio on Thursday to answer more of your questions.

Speaker 1 Rachel has been doing so much reporting on this case over many, many years. She's been listening into the committal process as well.
So she's across that and knows this very, very well.

Speaker 1 So please get in touch with your questions, the case of at abc.net.au and we'll dive into them in an episode on Thursday.

Speaker 1 And we do have some schedule juggling to figure out what's coming up next and how we're going to manage the next stage of this committal in late November.

Speaker 1 Because from next week, we're going to be taking you to North Queensland. for the case of Toya's murder.
That is the murder trial of Rajwinder Singh. It's expected to start on Monday next next week.

Speaker 1 He has entered a not guilty plea of the murder of 24-year-old Toya Cordingley on a Cairns beach in 2018.

Speaker 1 I will be up there for the trial with ABC reporter Chris Tester to bring you all of the details from there. We'll have more of that in your feed on Friday.

Speaker 1 So make sure you grab yourself the ABC listener so you don't miss a moment of that.

Speaker 1 The case of the Easy Street Murders is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. It's reported by Alexandra Alvaro and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.
Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson.

Speaker 1 And a shout out to ABC senior lawyer, our legal queen, Jasmine Sims, to the Victorian newsroom, and also to Audio Studios manager, Eric George.

Speaker 1 This episode was produced on the land of the Wurundjeri people.