Toyah's Murder: Testing the boyfriend's alibi

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Speaker 2 The defence team has been drilling into the movements of Toya Cordingley's boyfriend as they test his alibi. And the court has also been shown the photos of Toya's body on the beach.

Speaker 2 The body of Toya Cordingley was found at Wangeti Beach Beach north of Cairns.

Speaker 1 Her face adorns billboards and stickers across the region. Searching for clues in the murder of the 24-year-old pharmacy worker alongside the idyllic and isolated beaches.

Speaker 1 This should not happen to a young woman out there walking her dog on a Sunday.

Speaker 2 We are now into week two of Rajwinder Singh's murder trial. There has been a trip to the beach.
There has been evidence diving into the location of Toya's boyfriend and photos of Toya's body.

Speaker 2 Chris Tester, ABC reporter in Cairns, has been there for it all. Chris, how are you holding up?

Speaker 1 Good morning, Stocky. Yeah, it gets a bit tough at times, but yeah, you focus on the job at hand, I suppose.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is. I mean, it's a tragic case, right? You know, this is a woman who died so young.
So look after yourself.

Speaker 2 And I mean, as well as you being there to bring all this to us, you know, I hope family's in the room as well, hearing all this too.

Speaker 2 I mean, there has been a fair bit of evidence that's kind of unfolded over the last few days. Can you take us through it? Give us the kind of wrap in 60 seconds or so.

Speaker 1 We've heard a lot more about the movements of Toy Accordingly's boyfriend Marco Heidenreich, the hike that he says he was on on that day and from the friends that he says he was with.

Speaker 1 We've also seen and heard more evidence about how the police pieced together different people's movements on that day because we've seen phone records that they've obtained.

Speaker 1 and how they've used those phone records to kind of triangulate the locations of different people.

Speaker 1 We've seen some more forensic evidence, evidence about items that were seized and tested from the beach and from Rajwinder Singh's house.

Speaker 1 And then the jury got to visit Wangeti Beach to piece together with their own eyes the locations where different things are alleged to have happened, where Toya's dog was tied up, and where the courts heard Toya's body was buried in that shallow sandy grave.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Chris. Yeah, we had our episode from the beach yesterday.
So if you want to hear about how that unfolded, jump back into the case of feed and have a listen to that one.

Speaker 2 Chris, I am really interested in talking through some of that forensic evidence and phone data in this episode, because that stuff can get dry at moments, but is really interesting and does tell.

Speaker 2 quite a significant story when you drill into it.

Speaker 2 But before any of that, I want to start this episode where we finished our episode on Thursday with the boyfriend of Toy Accordingly, Marco Heidenreich.

Speaker 2 We were talking about the police, how they investigated him, where he was. Now, Chris, we've had all of his kind of friends up, various friends walking through the court, sitting in the witness box.

Speaker 2 What have we heard from them?

Speaker 1 Well, it's really important evidence insofar as confirming Marco Haydenreich's alibi that he went with his friend Joel Kuhman on that hike to Spring Creek, which as we know is near Port Douglas.

Speaker 1 It's kind of in that general area about 20 to 30 minutes away from Wangetty Beach.

Speaker 1 Joel Kuhman's given evidence essentially describing how that day unfolded, very similar, you know, the same narration of events as Marco.

Speaker 1 They went up to the top of the falls, and then things went wrong as they were coming down, and they had to spend all that time searching for Marco Hardenreich's dog jersey, which, in Joel Kuman's words, he thinks it caught a scrub turkey and ran into the bushes.

Speaker 1 We heard a bit about how they went to different houses of other friends in the area that night to borrow torches so they could keep looking for the dog in the dark.

Speaker 1 And a couple of those friends gave evidence: Toby and Max Petrak, their brothers, who, as we heard, they all went to school with Marco and Joel in Port Douglas and met when they were kids swapping Pokemon cards.

Speaker 1 Toby described seeing Marco that night. They described a bit of how he was feeling, his frustration at not being able to reach his girlfriend on the phone.

Speaker 1 And then they were, of course, the first friends that arrived at Wongetty Beach later that night

Speaker 1 in the dark when Marco Hardenreich was on his way home and called them because he'd spotted Toy Courting Lee's car parked at the Wongetty Beach Southern Car Park, just on the side of the highway as you head back to Cairns.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I loved just the way that Marco Hayden-Reich's friends explained all the detail around that, but also their connection to him.

Speaker 2 I mean, you mentioned the Pokemon cards in there, and that really just sort of took me back into the relationships I have with my friends, thinking about how they might, you know, handle being in a witness box, corroborating a story that, you know, they had experienced with me.

Speaker 2 And it was interesting, yeah, they were kind of checked and tested on various different parts of Marco Hayden-Reich's evidence, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, you've got the prosecution kind of talking you through it, and then the defense gets up and kind of challenges each witness as well on their account. You know, were you here at this point?

Speaker 2 Did you really see him at these places as well, which was, you know, really kind of interesting interrogation of the detail around this.

Speaker 2 And something that kind of drew out of this were the photos that Joel Kuman had taken on the walk with Marco Haydenreich.

Speaker 2 And then we have one of the police digital forensics experts basically talking through all of the metadata of these photos.

Speaker 2 You know, basically the courts trying to figure out, you know, where they were taken, it explained how it was all extracted. And it was kind of simple with the prosecution.

Speaker 2 You know, dry, but simple, you know, taking through tables and the like. But then the defense really dove in and like, it seemed like they were really trying to kind of pick this apart, right?

Speaker 1 Well, these photos, there are eight of them.

Speaker 1 A couple have Marco Harden, Reich and Joel Kuman in them together, but they're really pivotal to the case because these photos, as, you know, when you take a photo on your phone, if you've got the settings activated, It will record a time stamp when the photo was taken and a location of where the photo was taken and I guess these are the critical pieces of evidence that the prosecution is relying on beyond you know the evidence of of his mates essentially just to to put Marco Hardenreich away from Wongetty Beach because of course to find Raj Windersing guilty the prosecution not only has to prove that that he's responsible for the crime, but they have to exclude the possibility that anyone else could have done it.

Speaker 1 So we've got

Speaker 1 these eight photographs that Joel Kumen says he took on this hike.

Speaker 1 They're timestamped roughly between about 20 to 4 that afternoon and just after 5 o'clock, kind of showing the later photos, put them at the top of the falls together.

Speaker 1 And it's really,

Speaker 1 the defense has really cross-examined both Joel Kuman and the police about could these timestamps and location data have been altered.

Speaker 1 So most of the location stamps

Speaker 1 show that the photos were taken at Spring Creek, but a couple actually put them in a Port Douglas golf course. And the police fielded questions about, well, why could that be?

Speaker 1 He clearly wasn't at a golf course. And they've tried to explain around, well, sometimes when you have poor GPS service, your phone might ping back to its last known

Speaker 1 cell tower location, which might be why it thinks the photos. were taken in Port Douglas.
Joel Kuman was asked, did you manipulate the photos? Do you know how to edit metadata on photos on your phone?

Speaker 1 We got some bit of a tense exchange there. And,

Speaker 1 you know, Joel Kuman, I guess, biting back a little bit at the defense, he said, well, you know, I can right-click

Speaker 1 and go properties if that's what you're asking. But quite significant

Speaker 1 evidence from the police digital forensics analyst,

Speaker 1 Sergeant Matthew Roder. He's saying that he spent hundreds of hours looking at these photographs,

Speaker 1 you know, dating back to when the police actually downloaded

Speaker 1 the evidence from Joel Kuman's phone and he hasn't found any trace that anything was changed he said that it took some two to three weeks to actually map out the inner workings of this phone and we got a bit of an insight into how kind of Samsung phones store their photos that we heard that you know when you take a photo the data on that photo, the time and the location and other data isn't just stored in one place.

Speaker 1 It's not just in your photos app. There's actually all these hidden databases in your phone that record these pieces of information that they're kind of presented in an Excel table.

Speaker 1 We saw some of these in the court. And he kind of said if you changed it,

Speaker 1 you'd leave some kind of trace of having done so. And he said that after all this time of finding, you know, I think it was about

Speaker 1 seven different databases within the phone and

Speaker 1 at least two showed, you know, this specific data. He just said like

Speaker 1 he didn't find any sign that it had been changed.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I mean, Chris, you say, you know, hundreds of hours of work from this digital forensics officer.

Speaker 2 And that is work that has been continuing through this year as well, because we heard the defense, you know, referencing a conversation that he'd had with one of his superiors following a previous trial that we've already mentioned.

Speaker 2 That he was asked to kind of do a little bit more work, make sure that he could be, you know, trying, asking if he could be more confident that these photos hadn't been altered, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, Sergeant Rota kind of described this particular case as, you know, one of those cases that you come back to when you have a bit of spare time. And he says that,

Speaker 1 you know, when I have that time, I jump back into it and try and look around and see if I can find more. And, yeah, his evidence was that he hasn't found any more.

Speaker 1 And of course, Joel Kuman, as I said, denies having changed any of the metadata on the photos. So I guess if the jury accepts this evidence,

Speaker 1 as the prosecution's put it, Marco Hardenreich could not have been at Wongetty at the time we're talking.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting as well, you know, talking about Joel Kume and the tense interactions that he had with the defense at times.

Speaker 2 I mean, there was a point where he was asked if he'd done, I think, a multimedia degree, and I was trying to figure out what the relevance of that would be.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, as we got further through this day and we're talking about altering photos, I realised probably where they were going with that.

Speaker 2 Joel had started a multimedia degree at one point, had never finished his multimedia degree, the court heard.

Speaker 2 Chris, speaking of photos, just after I left on Thursday, I bailed out of Cairns at lunchtime.

Speaker 2 You saw some photos of the crime scene of the beach, hearing from a forensics officer, you know, basically talking through, you know, what they found around Toya's body and just how much blood soaked into the sand, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so this was from Sergeant Kylie Webster, one of the forensics officers from the police, who was kind of one of the first called to the scene to do some of that,

Speaker 1 you know, very early testing of what...

Speaker 1 was at the scene where she was buried at Wongetty Beach. Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane actually opened with this witness, I guess, by giving a warning.

Speaker 1 Of course, we've mentioned that a lot of Toy Accordingly's family have been sitting in the public gallery post-giving evidence, following along the trial each day.

Speaker 1 And Nathan Crane just gave that warning of, you know, there aren't going to be some scene photos here that we actually had members of the family leaving the gallery for that reason.

Speaker 1 Look quite confronting photos,

Speaker 1 probably very worth, warranted the warning that was given.

Speaker 1 We did actually see photographs taken by the forensic officer of Toy accordingly's body in situ in that shallow, sandy grave and some parts of the areas that were tested for any forensic evidence.

Speaker 2 And Chris, I mean, we heard earlier in the trial, you know, just sort of like a broad description of Toy's injuries, which sounded, you know, really, really quite brutal.

Speaker 2 What was it like watching these photos, seeing these photos?

Speaker 1 It's never enjoyable.

Speaker 1 These photos didn't specifically focus on the injuries that she sustained, but we did see, you know, they pointed to the fact that her bikini wasn't removed and parts of that were tested for any DNA evidence.

Speaker 1 We heard evidence about the challenges, I guess, of extracting DNA using tape lifts. from a crime scene where there's a lot of sand.

Speaker 1 Of course, there was a lot of blood staining on parts of her body, and

Speaker 1 sand can be a bit of a barrier to extracting DNA samples.

Speaker 1 We saw a few items, for example, a stick from the grave site that was tested for DNA.

Speaker 1 But Sergeant Kylie Webster, of course, also took forensic samples from other places that will probably be quite significant in this trial as well, such as Raj Windersing's home in Innisfail.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. Yeah, I remember I was following along with this section.

Speaker 2 I mean, the way that she described kind of having to sift through the sand that was being removed from Toye's body to make sure they didn't miss anything, pouring bits and pieces onto a tarp that they would analyse later.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, a sample from a house in Innisfail. And I, for a moment, sort of wondered

Speaker 2 what that would have been. And yeah, drawing that kind of link there as well is interesting.
And I mean, the challenges of trying to collect DNA on a beach with the sand.

Speaker 2 And yeah, as you say, Chris, that the kind of tape lifts that they're doing, trying not to get too much sand on a bit of tape would have just been a real challenge for kind of collecting evidence in a location like that as well.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure we're going to get into DNA much, much more. And, you know, as you may have worked worked out, I'm not in Cairns anymore.
I've come back to Melbourne.

Speaker 2 And despite the outstanding video streaming capabilities that we discussed

Speaker 2 during the jury impanel that we watched from the police station in Cairns, we don't have a link for me to follow along here.

Speaker 2 So no reasons given by the court for why we couldn't have one, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 Chris, I mean, as we're talking through all this, I mean, you mentioned Rajwinder Singh's house, talking about the crime scene photos.

Speaker 2 Rajwinda Singh, the defendant, in this trial, he's been in the room for all of this. He's sitting behind the bar table.

Speaker 2 It's just in front of the public gallery as well, and with this sort of couple of metre-high glass wall behind him.

Speaker 1 How has he been throughout all of this?

Speaker 1 It's hard to know what's going through anyone's mind at any given time, but he certainly appears as though he's following along, following, listening to all the evidence.

Speaker 1 We haven't really seen too many signs of emotion from Rajwinder Singh.

Speaker 1 Probably the exception to that was when his lawyer, if we flash back, Greg Maguire, was giving the defence opening at the start of the trial.

Speaker 1 And we heard Greg Maguire quoting from of that conversation that was recorded between Rajwinder Singh and an undercover police officer.

Speaker 1 Evidence we're yet to hear tendered at the trial but as Greg Maguire was quoting from that we saw a bit of emotion from Rajwinder Singh. Ever since then he's he's sat there very quietly

Speaker 1 appearing to be patiently listening to all the evidence as it's presented in the case against him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean I was you know when I was sitting quite close to him actually I think it was Thursday last week there was a little chair with a table that sort of flips down over it that I was working from which was right next to the dock behind the bar table.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I noticed him moments looking at the ceiling, other moments writing down, which I think often people are kind of advised to do. So there's something that they can do while they're

Speaker 2 in the dock, listening to the evidence that's being presented against them.

Speaker 2 And Chris, you know, we've been talking through some of the forensic evidence we've heard about photos, also about the crime scene.

Speaker 2 We're also getting into phone data territory. I think that was almost all of Friday, right?

Speaker 2 Unpacking the various phone tower data, where Toya's phone ping from, where other people's phones have pinged from.

Speaker 2 Now, that can be a pretty dry affair.

Speaker 1 How is the jury coping with all that evidence?

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 it was a long day of phone evidence, and a lot of it was taken up with a witness from Telstra who was...

Speaker 1 explaining to the jury how mobile phone communications work and I guess some of the techniques Telstra uses to keep the phone network functioning.

Speaker 1 But that can can also be used by law enforcement, as we've heard, to kind of pinpoint where people were or where a phone handset was at a given time.

Speaker 1 And it sort of became apparent towards the end of that day why this was so significant in the case.

Speaker 1 And I guess significant also in the context of the first week, because really we've heard so much evidence about Marco Hardenreich and his movements that this was really outside of the prosecution and defense openings, the first we've kind of heard about evidence of how the Crown is going to put that Rajwinder Singh was involved in this scene

Speaker 1 because we heard at the very end of Friday that some of the phone evidence around where Toya Cordingly's phone moved that afternoon, the afternoon she's alleged to have been murdered, and how that corresponded with a blue Alfa Romeo, which was seen on traffic cameras roughly in the same area.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 And I mean, we heard in the openings as well that, yeah, basically the prosecution says they've tracked this phone, they present evidence that shows the phone moving along this route, and then traffic cameras of this Blue Alpha Romeo that they say is Rajwinder Singh's.

Speaker 2 We haven't quite gotten to that part of the evidence yet, so we haven't heard that evidence presented to the jury as yet.

Speaker 1 We haven't heard much of the traffic evidence, just that there were a couple of questions asked of a police officer around why did you only map the phone

Speaker 1 data against this one particular car.

Speaker 1 So we're still to get to most of the traffic side. But what we did hear was that these final three pings, for want of a better word, from Toy Accordingly's phone at 4.51 p.m.

Speaker 1 that afternoon, the 21st of October 2018, again at 5.08 p.m. and then at 5.17 p.m.

Speaker 1 And what it showed was Toy Accordingly's phone connecting with these three towers, which if you put them on a map, they're kind of moving through the northern suburbs of Cairns in a direction kind of away from Wongeti Beach.

Speaker 1 And I guess the significance of the case is, well, Toy Accordingly was found buried in that sand. But if her phone has been moving away from there at this time, then the phone has left the beach.

Speaker 1 We also heard evidence from earlier in the day just around kind of how the police looked at this phone data

Speaker 1 to plot where she was at some of the times we know where she was because she was spotted on CCTV, you know,

Speaker 1 at the market and near the cafe, for instance.

Speaker 1 So they've used this data, which is called Timing Advance. The telcos use it as a measurement of how long it's taking a signal to get from a cell tower to a handset.

Speaker 1 And it's expressed as a distance, a measurement. Telstra measures this in bands of 78 meters.

Speaker 1 So what it does is it... it gives a rough indication of how far a handset is away from a tower.

Speaker 1 And then they've looked at, well, it's connected to, let's say, at one point it's connected to the Cairn City tower.

Speaker 1 They can work out which specific antenna on that tower it was connected to, which gives them a rough idea of the direction that the phone was from the tower at that time.

Speaker 1 So they've looked at, well, it was connected to tower A. It was about,

Speaker 1 you know, two kilometers away and it was in this general direction. And that's how they're able to kind of pinpoint where the phone was

Speaker 1 at a given time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, this phone data is always really interesting. I mean, it can be quite dry.
And the way you've explained this,

Speaker 2 you know, you've done this, you've done in sort of like, you know, 90 seconds, a couple of minutes, what usually takes 90 minutes to a couple of hours in a courtroom.

Speaker 2 Um, but I mean, you're talking through all these different points. Someone actually emailed the pod, the caselobe at abc.net.au, kind of asking for a map.

Speaker 2 Um, now we're not going to do that, um, we can't make a map, we won't work on a podcast. But what we do have is Chris Tester in a studio who's seen all of these things.

Speaker 2 Can you can you kind of describe where these pings head, like you know, in a mental map for us, Chris?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so essentially, there are three pings that I guess are the focus of that critical time in the afternoon at 4.51 p.m., 5.08 p.m. and 5.17 p.m.

Speaker 1 So roughly kind of in that kind of 20 to 30 minute window. And they roughly kind of follow,

Speaker 1 they get closer to Cairns as each one goes on.

Speaker 1 So the first one would appear to be somewhere near the highway, kind of on the way back from Wongetty Beach, and then two more deeper into the urban area, which...

Speaker 1 would appear to suggest that the phone was traveling away from the Wongetty Beach area at the time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. And then we have, yeah, those two that kind of go sort of to and through Cairns.
And then, and I think we lose the phone completely, don't we?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we heard that the last ping was at 5.17 and Mark Borg, the witness from Telstra, was asked about why that would be the last time because, you know, he kind of gave evidence about how just because you're not actively using a phone, you're not, you know, pressing your screen on the handset, that phones are generally always active, either because the phone is letting the mobile network know where it is so that its connectivity is improved, or because apps you know might be updating in the background or you might get a message from a friend on Facebook.

Speaker 1 But that was the last ping we heard at that 5.17 and he said that the most likely explanation is that after that the phone was off.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. I mean interesting talking about phone data.
We had these grand plans to use

Speaker 2 some quite quite flash ABC tech to connect to the beach yesterday.

Speaker 2 It does rely on a quite a decent data connection though, which we didn't have because there was very little data or phone reception at all on Wan Getty Beach, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it kind of made me think back to some of the evidence in the trial because we've heard that, you know, at a couple of points, we looked at Toy accordingly's phone and where she was at the time.

Speaker 1 And as I mentioned, you can get an idea of the tower you're connected to and the distance from that.

Speaker 1 And, you know, at different points, she might have been, you know, one or two or three or four or five kilometers from the phone tower that she was connected to.

Speaker 1 But at one point, when she would appear to be at Wongetty Beach or in that area, we see that her phone's actually connected to a tower all the way in Port Douglas.

Speaker 1 And the way this was displayed to the jury is like a table and a graph with the tower, the name of the tower that it was connected to and the time, and then the distance in meters, and it's flung all the way out to 28 kilometers.

Speaker 1 So like it's connected to a tower at Port Douglas. right across the the water there.

Speaker 1 So it sort of made me think a little bit about which, I wonder which phone my, I wonder which tower my phone is connected to at this point in time.

Speaker 2 Hopefully the phone data of either of our phones isn't presented in court for a very long time, if ever.

Speaker 2 Chris, something I noticed towards the end of last week, we had some of the junior solicitors taking some of the questioning.

Speaker 2 Normally, we have Greg McGuire and Nathan Crane, the defense and prosecution barristers, respectively,

Speaker 2 doing the examination in chief and the cross-examination of witnesses. But yeah, I noticed this with the Defence Junior Barrister, Kate Juhas, taking the photo metadata questioning.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm not going to pass any judgment on Greg McGuire's technical competence around that decision, but also we've had the prosecution junior as well, Hannah McNeil, taking some of the witnesses through their evidence as well.

Speaker 2 I mean, is that unusual to see in a courtroom?

Speaker 1 Not particularly, no, and it's important to remember, yeah, we talk about the Crown Prosecutor, Nathan Crane, and Defense Barrister Greg Maguire.

Speaker 1 I guess they're the kind of the leaders of each camp, but there is, in fact, a legal camp that each side has. They're not

Speaker 1 all each represented by one single lawyer, and there's also solicitors on the team as well. So each side can have, you know, three or four people representing it at the bar table at any time.

Speaker 1 And, you know, in trials, it's not unusual to see kind of heads getting together and conversing, a bit of teamwork. So

Speaker 1 yeah, it is kind of a team effort on both sides, the prosecution and the defence.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I notice there's a lot of note-taking as well, you know, when you've got, you know, say Greg McGrath, for example, cross-examining a witness, you'll have Nathan Grain, you know, taking some notes there, whispering to his junior barrister as well, you know, conferring with the team.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, interesting to see the kind of work that's being done. And then, you know, won't go into any detail here, obviously, because these are things that often the jury won't see.

Speaker 2 But sometimes following that, you'll have a conversation with the judge about something that's unfolded in that window and if there needs to be a correction or an update. So always working, always

Speaker 2 kind of on. Chris Speakey of the jury, last week we were talking about how quickly things were moving.
You know, no breaks, just a lunch break in the middle, powering through.

Speaker 2 Straight after that record, a message from the jury asking for some more breaks.

Speaker 1 Yes, which they have been having, the usual, you know, mid-morning, kind of your 10 to 15 minutes, and then again in the afternoon.

Speaker 1 Pretty important for concentration when you're hearing really technical evidence about how mobile phone technology works and how phones connect to handsets and then

Speaker 1 cross-examination of interrogations of some of that. But things have slowed down a little as well.
We went to the beach yesterday, which was a...

Speaker 1 you know, a fair slog, a four-kilometre walk on a tropical beach, and the jury was given the opportunity to decide whether they wanted to return to the courtroom for a couple of hours of evidence in the afternoon.

Speaker 1 Bear in mind, they probably would have been a bit sweaty and covered in sand and salt water on their feet at least. They opted to take the afternoon off.

Speaker 1 So, we resume on Tuesday morning with more evidence.

Speaker 2 Great. Thank you, Chris.
That was my next question.

Speaker 1 Did they get the afternoon off yesterday? And they did.

Speaker 2 So, good to know. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 We have had a bunch of questions sent in from listeners to the KSOB. If you have a question yourself, please get in touch with the case of at abc.net.au.

Speaker 2 Really love getting these questions. There's a few that we've had already, Chris, from you know, following our beach episode yesterday.
So we'll get to one of them in this bracket.

Speaker 2 But first up, we have a question from Tia from Perth. Tia writes, hi, Chris and Stocky, long time listener, first time submitting a question.
My question is about Toya's dog.

Speaker 2 Could Indy be considered a witness? Is it possible to do a suspect line-up, including Rajwinder Singh, and see how Indy reacts?

Speaker 2 And if she had a visceral reaction to a particular person, could that hold up in court?

Speaker 1 I'm not sure how a dog would be called to give evidence in court in terms of,

Speaker 1 well, a witness who comes to court needs to either give an affirmation or swear an oath on the Bible, which might be a little challenging for a dog.

Speaker 1 But it's not, of course, to say that dogs aren't relevant to the evidence because, as we've already heard, there are questions being asked of police witnesses and

Speaker 1 even some of the civilians in the case about Indy's lead, for example, forensic testing.

Speaker 1 So while a dog might not be able to be called into court to pinpoint at any individuals, they can still play a role in the case.

Speaker 1 And we've already heard questions, for example, asked of Marco Hardenreich about how he might have thought Indy would react in a kind of situation like that on the beach.

Speaker 1 His answer, if you're interested, he said that she'd only ever been aggressive towards another dog, his dog Jersey, rather than any humans.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and we did hear as well in the evidence last week that Jersey was a red healer. I think it was Joel Kuman who gave us the breed of Jersey.

Speaker 2 So if you're following the dogs of this case, you can update your spreadsheet with that one.

Speaker 1 And I know a lot of people are very interested in, I guess, the different dogs in this case, too.

Speaker 1 We did also hear evidence, just going back to the start when we were talking about Marco Heidenreich's friends. You might remember Jersey was lost, of course, at Spring Creek per Marco's evidence.

Speaker 1 Monique Steele, a friend who lives in that area, said that a recording of Marco calling for the dog was actually used by friends trying to coax Jersey out.

Speaker 1 And yeah, some walkers actually found Jersey a couple of days later on the morning of the Tuesday, the 23rd of October.

Speaker 1 Just in case you were wondering about what became of Jersey after being lost in the scrub.

Speaker 2 I appreciate you closing the loop on that, Chris. Thank you very much, Tia.
Wonderful question. So appreciate you sending that one in.

Speaker 2 Another question here, Bella from Melbourne. Bella writes, Hi, Stocky and Chris.
Love the sneaky yep about the jurors' excursion.

Speaker 2 You mentioned that if one of the jurors was feeling too tired to hear more witnesses after the beach walk, the court wouldn't resume for the Arvo session.

Speaker 2 Does that mean that if a juror is sick or late for just one day, the court can't hear any evidence and Justice Crowley has to send all the other jurors, lawyers and journos, home?

Speaker 1 Well, this is why we have reserves. There are three reserve jurors empaneled on this.

Speaker 1 I guess if a juror was ill to not be able to actually sit at all for the day, that's when they would probably be excused and a reserve juror would move into the breach and become part of the 12.

Speaker 1 Yeah, courts don't particularly like when jurors are late. We've heard not just in this trial, but pretty much every trial that

Speaker 1 you'll sit through, jurors are encouraged to be there on time.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the court list, actually, it will say which the time that jurors are required to attend court that morning, and it's generally a little earlier than the start of the case.

Speaker 1 So every day, I think we've managed to kick off on time in this trial.

Speaker 1 So long may that continue.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think I've been in a trial yet that's been delayed for a late juror. So when that happens, I'll make sure I make a scene on on the case of so people know what's unfolded.

Speaker 2 And obviously we can't identify jurors, so no one's ever going to know who caused the delay, but you'll know that there was a delay at least. So Bella, thank you for sending in that question.

Speaker 2 Chris, great answer. Appreciate that.
And our last question here is from Emily. Emily writes, hi, Stocky and Chris.
Emily here, Miso's mum. Miso is a cat if you're playing at home.

Speaker 2 The case of, diving into other cases, was the early Christmas present I didn't know I needed. Thank you.
In a recent app, you talked about how the barristers and judge are wearing the wigs and robes.

Speaker 2 Why do they wear those? Are they standard garb for all cases? Are there different wigs to symbolize different things? Did they wear these in the Patterson case? Well, Chris, I'll jump in.

Speaker 2 To start with, they did wear robes in Aaron Patterson's trial. They were just different robes, they were just sort of the straight black robes.

Speaker 2 That's why Justice Crowley's robes with the red on them and the white cuffs really jumped out to me. And there are differences state to state.

Speaker 2 Chris, what about the wigs? What do they symbolize? What's the meaning behind them?

Speaker 1 Well, these go back long before Australia,

Speaker 1 as

Speaker 1 modern Australia was founded actually to England and probably the Middle Ages. But wigs and robes were actually introduced to distinguish legal professions from the rest of society.

Speaker 1 And if you've seen a barrister wearing a wig or a judge wearing a wig, you'll know why. It's like a bit of an unconventional hairstyle that you wouldn't see too often on the street.
And

Speaker 1 despite Australia having a much warmer climate than Old England and the UK, they've actually persisted in some parts, including Queensland.

Speaker 1 So I understand that, yeah, in Victoria, there's a bit more of a relaxed approach to wearing wigs, but they do form part of the default Queensland

Speaker 1 Supreme Court dress code. And

Speaker 1 there is a little bit of leeway for counsel to not wear the wigs if a judge isn't.

Speaker 1 But in this case, Justice Lincoln Crowley has had the wig on throughout the trial, and so counsel following suit, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, thank you, Chris. Great question, Emily, as well.
It's been something I've been dying to talk a bit more about. So I appreciate you getting in touch, emailing us at thekaseov at abc.net.au.

Speaker 2 Also, thank you for paying the cat tax and including a photo of Miso in your email.

Speaker 2 Miso, I appreciate you tolerating the discussion of dogs on this podcast as well. I know we've been talking about it a bit, so thank you for sticking with us and listening through all of that.

Speaker 2 If you do have any questions, please get in touch, thecaseov at abc.net.au. I really do love hearing from you.
And some of the questions are things that I haven't even thought to ask Chris myself.

Speaker 2 So really appreciate it when you send them through.

Speaker 2 Chris, where are we going next? Do you have any idea what's unfolding over the next couple of days?

Speaker 1 Well, we've started hearing some of that evidence around phone tower data.

Speaker 1 I think there's a little bit more to come, and I expect we'll start to hear a little bit more about, I guess, how that phone data and the Alpha Romano car,

Speaker 1 how those jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together in the Crown case. We've heard little bits in cross-examination, but there's going to be more evidence in chief to come on that point.

Speaker 2 Great. Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the case of.
Thank you. We'll be back in your feed on Thursday.
We'll have more details from the trial of Ranguinda Singh.

Speaker 2 As I said at the start, this is a really tragic story, tragic death of Toya Cording Lee, and we'll continue to bring you details from this trial on the case of Toya's murder.

Speaker 2 The case of Toya's murder is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. It's reported by ABC reporter Chris Tester and me, Stephen Stockwell.

Speaker 2 Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and this episode was produced on the land of the Gimoi, Wallabarra, Yedinji, and Wurundjeri people.