Toyah's Murder: Close friend says alleged killer acted 'nervously'

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Speaker 1 He was stressed and focused on his phone. That's how Raj Winderstein's friend described him as he drove the alleged murder to the airport the day after Toy Accordingly was killed.

Speaker 1 I'm Stephen Stockwell. Welcome to the case of Toya's murder.
The body of Toya Cordingley was found at Wongetty Beach north of Cairns. Her face adorns billboards and stickers across the region.

Speaker 2 Searching for clues in the murder of the 24-year-old pharmacy worker alongside the idyllic and isolated beaches. This should not happen to a young woman out there walking her dog on a Sunday.

Speaker 1 Over the last couple of days, we've had our first real insight into what Rajwinda Singh was doing after Toya Cordingley died from a friend who drove him to the airport.

Speaker 1 We've also heard from a lot of witnesses from Wongeti Beach that day, all with sort of slightly different accounts.

Speaker 1 And to help us digest all of this, we are joined by ABC Far North reporter Chris Tester. And yeah, Chris, kind of different recollections of the beach told to the courtroom.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Stocky, a real mixed bag.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a lot to discuss, a lot to unpack in this episode. But before that, can you wrap up the last couple of days for us in less than 60 seconds or so?

Speaker 2 Well, as you said, it's about halfway through the trial, and we've just had our first kind of real evidence about who Rajwinder Singh the man actually is.

Speaker 2 We've heard from his friend Rajkaran Singh who would have been one of the last people in Far North Queensland to have seen him before

Speaker 2 he left, first for Sydney and then for India.

Speaker 2 We've also heard from several people who were at Wongeti Beach that afternoon of October the 21st, 2018, bits and pieces about what they remember and also what they don't remember from that afternoon.

Speaker 2 Then we've gotten deep into the police investigation.

Speaker 2 We've heard about how they looked at mobile phone data to kind of pinpoint the different locations that are significant parts of this investigation, where Toy Accordingly's phone is believed to have gone after it left Wongetty Beach.

Speaker 2 And we've started hearing evidence about the extensive work police went into to try and identify cars that were traveling away from Wongetty Beach towards Cairns that afternoon to try and match up all this data and find the person that they were looking for.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Chris. I mean, the detail and the data around

Speaker 1 the kind of the search for Toya's phone and then this dragnet of cars, I'm really looking forward to unpacking. And also, who was seen at the beach the day that Toya was murdered?

Speaker 1 You know, we have these eyewitness accounts. So, yeah, looking forward to unpacking some of that with you, exploring what all of them heard.

Speaker 1 But, Chris, I really want to start with the friend of Raj Winder Singh, the guy who took him to the airport after the death of Toy accordingly.

Speaker 1 Tell me about this guy, who is he?

Speaker 2 Well, Rajkaran Singh, a very similar name, can get quite confusing. Rajkaran Singh met Rajwinder Singh in India.
He described it as a bit of a chance meeting at a wedding. It would have been

Speaker 2 in the mid to late 2000s.

Speaker 2 Their villages weren't too far apart, and we've heard that there might have been a bit of contacts between their families.

Speaker 2 But in Australia, they became friends. Rajkaran Singh describes having known Rajwinder Singh from Sikh community events such as the Sikh Games.

Speaker 2 Rajkaran found out at one point that Rajwinder Singh was studying nursing and that was something that Rajkaran was interested in doing.

Speaker 2 So Rajwinder Singh, the accused in this case, was actually a year ahead of Rajkaran

Speaker 2 at James Cook University in Cairns. We've heard a little bit about the relationship between them.
They both were married.

Speaker 2 They were friendly.

Speaker 2 Rajkaran Singh lived in Cairns. Well, Rajwinder Singh lived in Innisfail.
And we've heard from Rajkaran.

Speaker 2 He told the court that, you know, when he would go down to Innisfail every now and then and stop by and visit Rajwinder and his family, Rajwinder would sometimes stay at his house if he had kind of back-to-back overnight shifts at the Cairns hospital.

Speaker 2 Together

Speaker 2 they volunteered together at the seat games as well.

Speaker 2 Kind of a, yeah, to a degree, a professional, personal relationship between the two men.

Speaker 1 And how does Rajwinder Singh end up at Rajkaran Singh's house, you know, getting this lift to the airport?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so we're talking about October the 22nd, 2018. This is the morning that at Wongetty Beach, there are police and, you know, SES personnel searching.

Speaker 2 Of course, Toy Cordingly's family also searching. And at one point, her father, Troy,

Speaker 2 we've heard, has found her body under the sand.

Speaker 2 I guess That same morning, Rajkaran Singh was at Bunnings,

Speaker 2 and he's received a phone call from his friend Rajwinda who said, can you please take me to the airport today? He said, sure, no worries.

Speaker 2 And at some point that day, Rajwinder has taken his blue Alfa Romeo, this is what Raj Rajkaran's evidence is, to

Speaker 2 Rajkaran's house.

Speaker 2 seemed to be in a bit of a hurry per Rajkaran's evidence and Rajkaran Singh said that his parents were home at the time and they wouldn't let Rajwinder go without sitting down for a cup of tea and he's said that his friend kind of said, you know, make it quick.

Speaker 2 And they've had a quick cup of tea and then dashed off to Cairns airport.

Speaker 1 I love the hospitality in that situation of, you know, Rajwinder Singh, you know, according to Rajkaran's evidence, being in, you know, a bit of a rush to kind of move through this scenario and not being able to refuse the invitation to the house for some tea.

Speaker 1 How did Rajkaran Singh describe Rajwinder Singh during the drive to the airport, on the drive to the airport? Do you get any insight into, you know, where he said he was going or what was going on?

Speaker 2 Yeah, a lot of the evidence and a lot of the questioning from both prosecution and defense really focused on those moments.

Speaker 2 I guess trying to get a bit of a sense of what may or may not have been going through Rajwinder Singh's mind at this time.

Speaker 2 Rajkaran said that his friend from the outset looked really stressed, and Rajkaran described to the court asking his friend, you know, is everything okay? Rajwinder Singh said, yep, everything's fine.

Speaker 2 He knew that,

Speaker 2 well, Rajwinder said he was actually going to to Sydney to visit his sister and that he'd be back in a few days.

Speaker 2 And so Rajkaran knew that Rajwinder Singh's sister had recently got married. He said, you know, is everything okay with her? And Rajwinder Singh has told him, yep, everything's fine.

Speaker 2 I'll tell you when I get back. And Rajkaran told the court that that seemed like a fairly strong, you know, clear statement.
So he didn't ask again.

Speaker 1 Right, okay. And so Rajkaran Singh drops Rajwinder at the airport.

Speaker 1 When does he see him next?

Speaker 2 A bit of a, I guess, a sense of the nature of the friendship and respect between these two men is that Rajkaran Singh at the time was actually applying to join the Army Reserves and he needed to put someone down as a referee.

Speaker 2 And he chose Rajwinder Singh for that. He put Rajwinder Singh's name down.
He said, you know, do you mind? Yep, sure.

Speaker 2 Rajkaran Singh had agreed that he would pick Rajwinder up, you know, from the airport when he returned. He said, you know, the date could change, but it'll probably be four to five days.

Speaker 2 Rajwinder Singh left his blue Alpha Omar at Rajkaran's house, and it was in the driveway. Rajkaran's moved it to the front of the house

Speaker 2 so he can get in and out freely. And I guess at some point he's not receiving any responses regarding this Army Reserves application.

Speaker 2 He's contacted Rajwinder Singh's wife, Sukhdeep Kaur, who's told him, oh, we've just reported him missing. And that was the point at which Rajkaran has contacted the police himself.

Speaker 1 Wow. All right.

Speaker 1 And so, I mean, I guess in this scenario, you know, Rajwinder Singh doesn't come back. You know, Rajkaran doesn't see him again.

Speaker 1 And yeah, am I right in thinking that, you know, the next time these guys are actually looking at each other is in the courtroom?

Speaker 2 Well, he was asked the question, did you hear from him again? And he said no. And interestingly, during this,

Speaker 2 I like to sit, the media bench in the Cairns courtroom just to take you there as kind of an inverse L shape.

Speaker 2 There's a bit of a spot where you can kind of get a good view of the whole courtroom. And I was watching Rajwinder Singh in the dock, you know, at this time there.

Speaker 2 His friend Rajkaran was giving evidence. Didn't have my eyes on him the entire time, but I noticed that he wasn't looking at him.
He was just kind of looking straight ahead, which

Speaker 2 as a journalist, you probably can't read too much into that, but just I thought it was an interesting observation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, where you're sitting in that room, Chris, as well. It's not too far from where the jury sits as well.

Speaker 1 So that'd be a similar view to what the jury would have of both the witness and the defendant in this case, right?

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 2 And the questioning of Rajkaran Singh from the defense kind of went into,

Speaker 2 you know, did you notice any injuries on Rajwinder Singh as you were driving him to the airport?

Speaker 2 We've heard from Rajkaran Singh that his friend seemed to be scrolling his phone. Remember he was saying he was a bit stressed, seemed to be scrolling his phone.

Speaker 2 He couldn't see what Rajwinder Singh was looking at, whether it was text or photos.

Speaker 2 And he said he didn't notice any injuries on Rajwinder Singh. Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane in reply kind of said, well, what would you have noticed? Would you have noticed a scratch, for example?

Speaker 2 And he said, I probably would have just assumed that was something from his kids.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Chris, as well as the evidence from Rajkar and Singh, we've had a number of people who were around the beach, around Wongidi Beach, the day that the toy Courting Lee was murdered.

Speaker 1 Quite a number of them, sort of this range of witnesses in different places around the beach. What kind of stuff have we heard from them? Who have they described? What did they see?

Speaker 2 It's a lot of people, and they were kind of at the beach in slight, maybe in slightly different locations at slightly different times.

Speaker 2 Some would have overlapped so that you'll remember there's a northern car park and a southern car park they're about four kilometers apart to where courtingly's car the quartz herd was parked at the southern end of the beach

Speaker 2 look people have described a fairly busy beach um for where it is i guess some up to 20 people in the northern car park and that she recalled there might have been 10 or 11 cars there some people there momentarily some people were there for you know two to three hours so

Speaker 2 a smattering of recollections i guess people are trying to describe people that they recall seeing for some people there were little things about other people at the beach that i guess stuck in their memory for others it seemed quite vague yeah what what are some of the things that have stuck in people's minds what what stood out anyone with like really clear recollections of stuff

Speaker 2 There was a couple, Christoph Huber and his wife, Rosaria Macarone, they had quite vivid memories. They saw a young woman, probably aged, they said, in her early 20s, with with blonde hair,

Speaker 2 walking a large dog, a large dark sort of a dark dog. And they kind of have a memory of this because they themselves had a sausage dog.

Speaker 2 And they described, you know, being on the beach and kind of seeing this young woman approaching with her dog and just kind of keeping an eye on her to make sure that the two dogs weren't going to clash.

Speaker 2 So they've watched her sort of until the larger dog has gone away. And, you know, they remember a point at which this larger, darker dog has stopped on the rocks and

Speaker 2 done a poo. And the woman's looked in her bag, rummaged around kind of for something to pick it up, and probably realized that it's gone down between the rocks.
And so she's moved on.

Speaker 2 And about 10 minutes later, they said that they were on the beach. And I think Christophe Huber said he noticed it first.

Speaker 2 And he told the court that there was this man kind of staring at them. And his evidence was that this man was kind of unnerving him, making him feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 He said, he told his wife that if, you know, he

Speaker 2 told the court, you know, I said to her, that if he kept staring at me, I'm going to go and approach him. And Rosario Macaroni gave evidence about also having seen this man who's eventually gone away.

Speaker 1 What sort of description do they give of this guy?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they told the court that he seemed to be, you know, stocky,

Speaker 2 maybe aged in his 40s, sort of olive skin and dark hair.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. And there was another witness as well.

Speaker 1 I mean, we were talking about, you know, the witness of, you know, the evidence of Christophe and Rosario, but, as well as that, there was a guy, Clifford Mitchell, who we heard from.

Speaker 1 He wasn't up, I don't think, for that long. And what we hear this, you know, quite detailed recollection from that couple.
Clifford's was sort of much vaguer.

Speaker 1 And it was interesting hearing him kind of tell this story of like what he saw and what he thought it was and all of that. And then asked how long.
he was looking for.

Speaker 1 And it was, you know, kind of a number of seconds. And then I realized, I think it was in the prosecution opening, was Clifford Mitchard mentioned in that moment by Nathan Crane, the prosecutor?

Speaker 2 He was, yeah. The Crown case is that the beach witnesses didn't really notice a lot, a lot of substance that could really add to the jury's decision here.

Speaker 2 Despite there being so many people at the beach that day, it is quite a sparse beach, and people only remember, I guess, part of what they saw.

Speaker 2 Clifford Mitchell was actually traveling from Port Douglas down towards Palm Cove.

Speaker 2 He's described to the court as having pulled into that southern car park, essentially because someone was tailgating him, and he just had been stressed about them being behind him.

Speaker 2 And so he's pulled into the car park and stopped to have a drink of water. So he's one of the witnesses who didn't actually go onto the beach itself.
He's just pulled into the car park.

Speaker 2 And he said something caught his eye, which was what he initially thought was a small child, a young girl.

Speaker 2 And he's realised at some point it's a woman and she was kind of bending over, wearing what he described as a holy jumper. And then he's seen that a little bit of a distance back.

Speaker 2 was a man just kind of looking at her. And he described this man as having sort of shoulder-length dark hair.

Speaker 1 Right. Interesting.

Speaker 1 I mean, is there anything else from the witnesses we heard from the beach, Chris, that you think we should also kind of mention here, talk about, or is that the kind of the general gist of it there?

Speaker 2 Look, a lot of people remember different groups that they kind of had interactions with.

Speaker 2 Interestingly, we've got one memory that seems to have stuck with a lot of people of the dogs they saw there that day to the extent that, you know, people might remember, for example, Christophe and Rosaria, they were there with their sausage dog.

Speaker 2 They said the first thing was they got to the car park and their dog actually jumped into another family's car.

Speaker 2 Then you have other people on the beach talking about other dogs from other families that they met and they even remember the names of those dogs. I think there was an Abby and a Remy.

Speaker 2 But another witness who described a person, I guess, that

Speaker 2 could potentially be relevant to this was Marinda Bong. Now, she was at the northern car park.
There was a bit of confusion in her evidence about which car park she was in.

Speaker 2 Now, all of these witnesses were asked at the time, about a week after

Speaker 2 the weekend Toya died, to

Speaker 2 draw a kind of diagram or mark out on a Google map different locations of where cars were parked and where they were.

Speaker 2 And Marinda Bong actually gave evidence saying that she was at the southern car park, but we could see on the map on the overhead that she was at the northern car park.

Speaker 2 And she remembers pulling in and also seeing a man who was kind of staring and making her uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 Marinda Bong is an Indigenous woman, and she said initially she thought this man was Aboriginal or Islander, and she went to say hello, and she's she's realized then that he was actually in her words an Indian man now interestingly for this evidence is she was there at the time with her partner Ford Gyre he gave evidence directly after her and his recollection was that the people he saw at that day were Caucasian and he described seeing the person near the car.

Speaker 2 Like Marinda Bong, he said he was looking at a plaque about how Wongetty got its name when they saw this person. So you could infer that they're talking about the same person.

Speaker 2 And he described it as being a white person with kind of gingery hair so very different recollection marinda bong said that they were at the beach looking for pippy shells for about two and a half hours for gyre says they were looking for pippy shells for half an hour to an hour max so even people who were there at the beach together that day had very different recollections from one another in some instances about what they saw yeah interesting i mean it's you know something that happened a long time ago and i guess in those moments you you might not necessarily realize kind of what you're seeing at that time.

Speaker 1 Chris, before we leave the beach, I want to talk a bit about some of the SES searches, kind of how that was searched and looked at following the death of Toy accordingly.

Speaker 1 It was incredibly thorough from the sounds of things as the SES was going through and looking through not just kind of combing the beach, but also the bushland, all of that, finding everything from mandarin peels to bongs in the bush between the highway and the beach at Wongeddy.

Speaker 1 Did it Am I right in thinking that they got lost in there as well, these SES volunteers?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was described as a very dense scrub. And we heard evidence from Carl Bishop, who was a member of the water police at the time.

Speaker 2 He was actually called out when it was still a search for a missing person, as in they assumed Toya at that point was alive.

Speaker 2 But he remained involved with the search even after her body was found. His role kind of changed.
And he was asked questions about, you know, items that were found on the beach.

Speaker 2 We've heard that very, you know, there wasn't a lot relevant to the investigation that was found on the beach.

Speaker 2 And he was asked the question, you know, if if something was there you would have found it he said yes I'm confident that's the case and he was asked a lot of questions as well about the the scrub this dense bush between the highway and the beach itself I guess from an aerial map it might not look like a lot and you can see the highway from different points of the beach but He was asked about these tracks and he said at one point, you know, they sent some of their most robust SES people into these tracks and it took them about five hours to get through what worked out to be eight kilometers of track.

Speaker 2 So really dense scrub. He kind of described it to the court as not really being a formed track as such, but kind of an area you could make your way through.

Speaker 2 And we saw these maps on the overhead of kind of the winding paths these tracks took through the scrub. And at one point they kind of had gone into one and turned around and came back.

Speaker 2 And it was only after putting the drone up and kind of mapping out where the different teams had gone that they kind of realized there actually was a way through that wasn't actually visible to them while they were in there themselves at the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. And what are they trying to show here?

Speaker 1 Basically that, you know, it's unlikely anyone was kind of coming through from the highway to the beach outside of the kind of car park entrances unless they had this kind of local knowledge of the area.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it seems to be a real focal point of the defence. You know, the idea, we heard in the defence opening that there are pig hunters who use this area.

Speaker 2 We've heard and seen evidence about that glow stick that was found next to Toya in in that sandy grave.

Speaker 2 So the defense is trying to, I guess, probe and see whether someone might have been able to exit the beach from a different location or if someone who had that knowledge would have been able to access the area.

Speaker 2 And just closing the loop, the jury's viewing all of this evidence now, this week, having just been to Wongetty Beach. So that experience is fresh in their minds.

Speaker 2 They didn't walk through the dense scrub, but they were taken to a culvert at the northern end at Rifle Range Road, sort of near the northern car park and where it meets the Captain Cook Highway.

Speaker 2 And I guess that gives a bit of an insight into some of the information the defence is hoping to potentially find there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, interesting to hear kind of how that culvert fits in, Chris, because yeah, when we were talking on Monday, it wasn't initially clear why that would be, why that was somewhere that the jury was going to.

Speaker 1 If you want to hear a bit more about the jury's viewing as well, jump back into the episode that Chris and I recorded on Monday.

Speaker 1 Chris is on Wan Geddy Beach talking us through the jury's viewing of that.

Speaker 1 Quite an unusual kind of process, not completely unprecedented, but it's unusual for a jury to wander out and do a field trip like that.

Speaker 1 So we took you there with them, and you can find that in the case of feed. ABC Listen app is the best place to get it.

Speaker 1 Chris, interesting as well, hearing you talking about the way that this search started.

Speaker 1 One of the things that confused me a little bit about Carl Bishop's evidence is he kept referring to kind of the missing person in this. And in my mind, Toya obviously

Speaker 1 isn't missing at this point. They found her body.

Speaker 1 But yeah, that's the kind of the reference that was through that. And all the detail of the search I found fascinating as well.

Speaker 1 You know, the lines that they were marked out, different colours for different searches, you know, the divers and things like that.

Speaker 1 And then he talked as well about kind of returning for a secondary search. And initially, I thought this was him going back to the beach, but it was somewhere called Lake Placid.

Speaker 1 What were they looking for there?

Speaker 2 That's right. Well, they didn't find any of Toya's possessions at the beach.
There was only a selfie stick that was found there.

Speaker 2 So, about a month after her death, it was a few days short of a month in November, they actually went to Lake Placid, which is in the suburb of Caravonica,

Speaker 2 I guess, looking for any items that may have been taken away from the beach. Now,

Speaker 2 police divers were sent up and briefed.

Speaker 2 And Carl Bishop was asked why they didn't go in, and he said, Oh, we're a bit reluctant to send our divers in there because of crocodiles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, look, very fair.

Speaker 1 That's a very reasonable and rational North Queensland fear.

Speaker 1 And Chris, I mean, I think the reason that we've ended up in this location, in this Lake Placid location, is because of kind of the phone pings, right?

Speaker 1 And there was a lot of evidence around kind of the movement of Toy Cordingley's phone over the last couple of days,

Speaker 1 how these signals work, basically sort of started kind of getting down right to like a sort of a physics lesson, really.

Speaker 1 What did you learn about the kind of movement of Toya's phone from that evidence?

Speaker 2 It's really formed the cornerstone of the investigation from here. The police have

Speaker 2 obtained Toya accordingly's call charge records. And then a few days after that, they've obtained, I guess, a more detailed set of phone records.

Speaker 2 But what even the initial records showed was that her phone made these three final connections to phone towers on that afternoon of the 21st of October.

Speaker 2 And if you plotted these locations on a map, they're kind of heading into Cairns away from Mongetty Beach.

Speaker 2 The first one was at 4.51pm, then there was another one at 5.08pm, and then a final one at 5.17pm. And that was the last time that Toy According Lee's handset

Speaker 2 registered with the network. Now we heard some evidence about what may have caused these.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm calling them pings, which isn't a technical term, but might explain they're connected to the tower.

Speaker 2 And look, there's no hard evidence as to what that is. It could have been someone sending her a Facebook message.
It could be an app on her phone updating in the background.

Speaker 2 But yeah, some kind of activity on her phone can register a ping with the cell tower. Now they can tell, we heard evidence that police can know which cell tower it connected to.

Speaker 2 And then we heard about this measurement called timing advance, which I've described in one of the previous pods briefly. But it's kind of a measurement about how far a handset is away from...

Speaker 2 the cell tower. And we heard evidence from a University of New South Wales telecommunications professor, Aruna Senavaratna, and he just described timing advance as kind of integral to the system.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 it's a technology that the telcos use to make sure that all the different phones that are out there can connect with a cell tower and that signals

Speaker 2 don't interfere with one another. So he said its accuracy is paramount.

Speaker 2 And this has really formed the investigation, narrowing down the geographic area that police are looking at because they've kind of got a path now and

Speaker 2 a time that they can follow where this phone may have gone.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that phone data you're talking about, Chris, is pretty central to this case because, I mean, we heard during the prosecution opening the way that, you know, the prosecution say they linked racial windows to this.

Speaker 1 You know, they were talking about phone pings and then also traffic camera footage, you know, this kind of blue Alfa Romeo that they say kind of was in the area of these phone pings at the same time.

Speaker 1 And Chris, you've started to get into that evidence. This is a really crucial part of this trial where we're getting through and understanding how this investigation was done.
I mean,

Speaker 1 what have you seen from, what have you heard from there?

Speaker 2 Absolutely. This is really pivotal to how the police investigation unfolded.

Speaker 2 And we've heard the officer in charge of a team of about 10 police who were tasked essentially with finding all the CCTV cameras on these roads in the northern beaches of Cairns and then looking through this footage.

Speaker 2 He was giving evidence yesterday.

Speaker 2 And essentially what they did was they got as many cameras as they could to form the to create these reference points.

Speaker 2 And what he wanted to do was was identify a choke point uh as in a point on a road that the car a car would have had to pass through if it was going from wongetty to caravonica which is near lake placid which is kind of the area where that final ping happened so they've got a they've got a rough path and they've got the time that this phone was pinging so they kind of have an idea of when you know a window of time that the this car might have been traveling so what they've done is they've used this choke point, which if you're in Cairns, it's the Clifton Road intersection, a TMR camera, which is a Department of Transport and Main Roads camera on the Captain Cook Highway.

Speaker 2 So the main highway through northern Cairns that heads to Port Douglas, runs past Wongetty Beach. They've got an intersection, it's a choke point.

Speaker 2 They figured, well, the car must have come through there. Now,

Speaker 2 They've set a window of time and they've identified 219 cars that passed through that intersection at that time.

Speaker 2 We are going through these one by one and we've heard how police narrowed that number of cars down to 70 cars based on, you know, the earlier cars, the first 105, would have traveled through too early to match these phone pings.

Speaker 2 So, they've managed to exclude a whole bunch based on that. They've also excluded cars based on,

Speaker 2 you know, if they've entered the road at a point that they couldn't have gone through Wongetty, if they were spotted at Port Douglas

Speaker 2 at a time that it wouldn't have, you know, they just wouldn't have had time to stop at Wongetty and commit a murder and keep going. And they've done this for even the cars that they deemed too early.

Speaker 2 Matt Maddock from the police has given evidence that they still went and excluded cars based on other reasons, even if they weren't judged to have fit the phone timing advanced data.

Speaker 2 He started giving evidence roughly around midday yesterday.

Speaker 2 At about 20 past four in the afternoon, and there was an hour lunch break, we got to car number 60 of the 70, and that was a blue Alfa Romeo.

Speaker 1 And this is a car that we have previously heard, we heard this in the prosecution opening, this is a car that is linked to Raj Winder Singh.

Speaker 1 We also heard it in Raj Karan Singh's evidence as well that he leaves this blue Alfa Romeo at his house.

Speaker 1 What else did we hear about this Blue Alfa Romeo?

Speaker 2 We haven't yet. So

Speaker 2 that's where the evidence wrapped up for the day. So how they've linked the Blue Alfa Romeo on the CCTV to Raj Winder Singh, the jury is yet to hear.
That's still to come.

Speaker 2 We've only heard the outline and the prosecution opening that that's what's alleged but interestingly enough the 70 cars so not the whole 219 but the 70 cars that they kind of judged to be in that time frame police put out a media release at the time and matt maddox said that you know the vision was compiled and an image was put out and a lot of people actually came forward and owned up to these cars which is what they were looking for as many people as possible to to come forward um some people did some people didn't um one woman actually erroneously claimed that she was the driver of one of the cars and we've heard evidence that she must have been mistaken because all these people kind of told police where they were traveling to and from that day and hers didn't quite line up.

Speaker 2 But that car was excluded anyway, based on where it traveled after. Cars were excluded if they were seen on cameras heading into Cairns rather than heading towards Caravonica.

Speaker 2 That was one of the ways police were able to exclude some of these cars from their investigation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, every now and then I'm kind of amazed by the sense of drama that courts manage by the end of the day, you know, getting to these moments of like, here is a blue Alframe, which you've heard so much about in this trial.

Speaker 1 We'll see you tomorrow. And then that's the kind of end of it.
So yeah, look, lots to kind of, you know, dive into further in our next episode, Chris.

Speaker 1 Before I let you go, I do want to dive into some questions. The KSOV inbox is bulging at the seams, so I want to run through some of these to help lighten the load.

Speaker 1 If you have a question you'd like us to answer, please get in touch. The case of at abc.net.au.
I really do enjoy getting all your emails. Chris, I want to start here with a question from Jaya.

Speaker 1 Jaya writes, hi, I love this program. Thank you for your hard work on ongoing cases.
In relation to the accused Mr.

Speaker 1 Singh, I'm wondering if they can track the movement of Toya's phone, why can't they track the same of the accused phone? As yet, I haven't heard how he became linked to Toya's murder.

Speaker 1 It's so very tragic. My thoughts are with the grieving family and friends.

Speaker 2 Well, to a degree, they can. And we've heard evidence from Optus.

Speaker 2 So Toy Cordingly's phone evidence was covered by Telstra that's who her provider was Raj Winder Singh's phone was was an Optus phone and a couple of people from Optus have come forward and given evidence and his phone data has been presented to the court

Speaker 2 And essentially it's tricky because there's a gap of about seven hours. So his phone last pinged

Speaker 2 an Optus tower at 1.16 on the afternoon of October the 21st, 2018. And then its next ping or connection with a cell tower that day was just after eight o'clock in the evening.

Speaker 2 So there's that gap of about seven hours. And the optus witnesses were asked, you know, why may have it stopped transmitting in that time.
And, you know, again,

Speaker 2 could have been a flat battery, could have been switched off, could have been on flight mode.

Speaker 2 We just don't really know.

Speaker 2 But that's, I guess, a an element that we've heard is that there was this seven-hour gap in Rajwinder Singh's phone activity,

Speaker 2 which kind of includes the relevant time that the police are zeroing in on with these cars and the traffic camera evidence.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank you, Chris.

Speaker 1 And great question, Jaya, as well. So, yeah, great to kind of have that one rounded out.
Talking a lot about phone data today, so it's a very, very timely question.

Speaker 1 Chris, another question here from Cameron on the Central Coast. Cameron writes, Hi, stocking, Chris.
Thanks for sharing this case with us in such an engaging manner.

Speaker 1 My question is, how long were Toya and Marco together for? Did that have any bearing in the police investigation or on how Marco was treated by investigators?

Speaker 2 Well, we've heard evidence that they got together in about 2016 and had lived together at a couple of different places by the time of her passing.

Speaker 2 There wasn't really any evidence about the amount of time that they were together having a bearing on the investigation.

Speaker 2 We heard evidence that Marco was immediately a person of interest as her domestic partner.

Speaker 2 And I guess The only indication we've seen is almost nine months, 10 months worth of text and Facebook messages between them being shown to the jury in their entirety, but no specific evidence around the time of their relationship having had an influence one way or the other on the police investigation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, thank you, Chris.
And great question, Cameron. So, yeah, thanks for getting in touch.

Speaker 1 And Chris, this is your first experience of a segment I like to call more of a statement, where someone writes in, not necessarily with question, but just with a really interesting view or thought or something that's still worth sharing.

Speaker 1 And this one is from Marty, and it's actually some more context to our chat on Tuesday about the wigs and gowns. So it was a really, really welcome statement that Marty has sent in.

Speaker 1 Marty writes, hi, Stocky and Chris, loving the pod and branching out around the country with all the legal stories unfolding state to state.

Speaker 1 A modern day reason for wigs and gowns, according to some at the bar, my husband is a barrister, is that these afford councils some anonymity in doing their job.

Speaker 1 Our system is that all people have the right to be represented by council who appear in same wig and gown and not by individuals.

Speaker 1 Similar to uniforms worn by police, armed forces, etc., the public see a service being provided, not an individual. So yeah, wonderful note there from Marty.

Speaker 1 If you have anything you would like to contribute to the case of, if it's a question, if it's, you know, it's a bit of background like that from Marty, please get in touch. The caseob at abc.net.au.

Speaker 1 I really do enjoy hearing from you. So yeah, please get in touch.

Speaker 1 If you have any questions, anything you're wondering about, it's very easy for Chris and I to fill in any gaps that you might have to make sure you can really engage with this trial and the judicial process in this country.

Speaker 1 Chris, where are we going next?

Speaker 2 Well, we've got more traffic evidence to come. As I said, we're finished on car number 60 of 70, which was the blue Alpha Romeo.

Speaker 2 So we'll hear more evidence about how that Alpha Romeo was linked into this investigation.

Speaker 2 Court won't be sitting on Friday. So if you're there on Friday or you're listening on Friday and you're frantically refreshing the ABC homepage or hanging out for the 7 p.m.
news,

Speaker 2 give yourself a break.

Speaker 2 His Honour Justice Crowley has other commitments. So

Speaker 2 we'll be reconvening on Monday once Thursday's evidence is done. And then into the final week of a three-week trial.
So the final week of evidence,

Speaker 2 a lot of people we still haven't heard from, including Rajwinder Singh's family members,

Speaker 2 his wife, his parents and his sister, all on the witness list. And of course, we heard mention earlier in the trial of Tyson Franklin, Evan McRae.

Speaker 2 These are all names of people who are yet to give evidence in this trial. So plenty more to come.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, there's a lot to come in this trial and be back in your feed on Tuesday next week. So grab yourself the ABC Listen App.
It's the best place to listen to the case of.

Speaker 1 And if you're using a different podcast platform, please give us a rating and review. It makes it easier for other people to find the case of and follow along with the case of Toya's murder.

Speaker 1 The case of Toya's murder is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. It's reported by ABC reporter Chris Tester and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.
Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson.

Speaker 1 Thank you to senior lawyer and legal queen Jasmine Sims for her legal advice all of the time, and to the Queensland Newsroom and to audio studios manager, Eric George.

Speaker 1 This episode was produced on the land of the Gimoi, Wallabara, Yedinji, and Wurundjeri people.