Toyah's Murder: Closing arguments – everything you need to know

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The jury has heard two stories of Rajwind Dassim. One is why he's the man who killed Toy accordingly and the other is why he isn't.

The prosecution and defence teams have both laid out their closing arguments in the final stages of his murder trial. I'm Stephen Stockwell.
Welcome to the case of Toya's murder.

The body of Toya accordingly was found at Wangeti Beach, north of Cairns. 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. This should not happen to a young woman out there walking her dog on a Sunday.

The jury in Raj Singh's murder trial is having the final arguments put to them from both sides, from both the prosecution and the defence. It is an incredibly important stage of this trial.

It's where the kind of arguments are clarified. And as this has been unfolding, ABC Far North reporter Chris Tester has been watching it all.

Chris, can you take us through all of what we've seen in the last couple of days with these closings in 60 seconds or so?

We've heard all the evidence over three weeks, but now both sides have had their last chance to put to the jury what they think they should make of all the facts.

And the Crown's presented Rajwinder Singh as a deceiving man who fled the country after murdering Toy accordingly, pointing to 10 key points they rely on to establish his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

But Mr. Singh's defence team say there are elements of the case that just don't make sense, and they've put forward questions and alternatives for the jury to consider.

Thank you, Chris. Really looking forward to unpacking all of this today.
We, you know, as you say, we've sat through weeks of evidence.

Often it is unclear why certain things are being presented to us until we get to this moment of the trial and the closing arguments and the stories that the prosecution and the defence are telling become really clear to the jury.

It's, you know, the lasting impressions they're going to make to them.

And, you know, some of the points I think the defence has made, very keen to discuss, you know, discussions around the knife, other people, all of that.

We'll get to that, but I want to start with the prosecution.

They're up first delivering you know their closing statements to the jury and and we won't really know what unfolded on one geti beach in october 2018 but we have had this kind of story told to us about what might have unfolded on the beach by prosecutor nathan crane right That's right, Stocky.

Nathan Crane did say, look, unless, quote, the killer decides to tell us, we won't really know what happened. But he's offered some potential explanations.

He said that, you know, perhaps Toy accordingly took a picture of something on her phone, and that might explain why her killer has taken her phone with him.

But interestingly, addressing this idea of motive, Nathan Crane was kind of, I guess, directing the jury away from it a little bit by saying, firstly, it's not an element of the offense of murder.

They don't need to know a motive.

And then he put to them that, well, what happens if we had an eyewitness who actually saw what had happened and was able to, you know, confirm I saw Rajwing to see Dua?

He said, even if you didn't have a motive then, you wouldn't need one.

So we're already seeing how the prosecution is kind of framing motive as a secondary element and not something the jury needs to spend too much time thinking about.

Yeah, and I mean, what are some of the blanks that he is taking us through in this closing argument, in the closing argument that he delivered over the last couple of days?

Well, we've heard a lot of evidence during the trial, for example, about

We heard some evidence about DNA that was found, but we've heard a lot of evidence also about DNA that wasn't found. For example, there was no sign of Toy Cordingly's DNA

in Rajwindersink's car. There was no sign of his DNA on the lead or the dog collar or the tree that Toy Accordingly's dog Indy was tied to.

And Nathan Crane's offered a few potential explanations for this. You know, he said that perhaps they've jumped in the water and washed off any blood that they had on them.

Perhaps they've used some of Toy Cordingley's things, you know, some of her clothes or whatever, in covering their hands to tie the lead to the tree.

He said, we don't really know exactly how Indy came to be tied to the tree.

You know, he's raised the prospect of potentially a confrontation between Rajwinder Singh and Toy accordingly that involved a weapon.

And maybe that she was kind of coerced to tie Indy up. These are all things that we don't know and can't really be judged on the evidence.

But really the crux of what the Crown is relying on here, I guess, is 10 key points that they say can only point to Rajwinder Singh being the killer.

And this was kind of the backbone of Nathan Crane's final address to the jury. It took place over about, you know, the equivalent of a full court day.

So he went back through a lot of evidence in detail, and I guess he kept circling back to these same 10 points. And Chris, what are those 10 points?

Yeah, look, it's the fact that we know Rajwinda Singh was on the beach, on Wongeti Beach that afternoon.

You know, that 3.7 billion likelihood ratio that his DNA was on the stick that was actually in the site where Toy Cordingly's body was left in the sand.

Some other DNA likelihoods, for example, that likelihood of it being on a log at the base that the killer must have touched,

considered together with the fact that his Blue Alpha Rome was the car that its movements away from Wongetty Beach matched those three pings from Toy Cordingly's phone,

that the car made this dart across to Lake Placid, which is roughly the point at which the phone was switched off or stopped connecting with phone towers.

You know, this journey home where he has this opportunity to throw things away. You know, we've heard that he took longer to get back to Innisfail that night than what he did to get up.

to Cairns from home earlier in the day and that he's passed by some bodies of water.

The fact that police say they haven't been able to find the shirt, you know, we've heard evidence that there was a shirt that was taken from his home that kind of looks similar to the one he was wearing in CCTV footage from the day, but there was no,

you know, no DNA from toy accordingly on that shirt. And the prosecution's essentially saying that this could be a different shirt.

He went home at a time that wouldn't raise suspicion.

We saw footage of him pulling into near where his street is in Innisfail about 20 to 8 later that night, but he keeps going and doesn't actually turn and come back towards his house until almost a quarter to nine, which is after the time that we've heard evidence that his wife would have gone to sleep.

Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane saying essentially he's waiting to get home where no one would notice that he's the home. At 11 o'clock that night, he's made a call to the Innisfale Hospital.

That call wasn't answered, but the Crown says that

he was calling to let them know that he wasn't coming into work the next day. We've heard evidence that he had the early shift, he didn't turn up.

And the Crown says that's proof that by then he'd already decided he was going to leave. And then he spends four years, more than four years, in India.

He knows people were looking for him, but there is no effort to contact his family. No phone calls to his wife or his parents to warn them, you know, in his version that he's afraid of these killers.

He didn't call them

to warn them about these people who may be after him. These are the points that the Crown is saying

all point to, you know, evidence of his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. They're saying only the killer could have taken Toy Cordingley's phone.

And they're really relying on this combination of circumstantial evidence to be considered together.

And Nathan Crane made that point to the jury that it's not just the facts in isolation, but it's when you put them all together as a combination that they're at their most powerful.

Yeah, the way you kind of talk about it there, these kind of questions, all of these things taken in one sense, you know, the Crown kind of asking these questions almost of the jury.

You know, whoever did this must have been the killer, the Crown says. And they put several of these things together.
And then the Crown says the answer to this question is Rajwinder Singh.

Chris, we've heard a lot in this trial about other people kind of around the beach who were known to Toy accordingly, who might not have been known to Toy accordingly,

you know, talking about Marco Heidenreich, her boyfriend, you know, another person, Evan McRae, he's a kind of Cairns local who sent a message in the days leading up to Toya's murder saying he needed to go pigging to kill something.

And I thought it was really interesting how Nathan Crane framed the efforts of police to try and find Toya's murderer, basically saying, look,

if it was one of those people, don't you think they they would have investigated them and arrested them? Because it would have been much easier.

Yeah, I think if you go back to the earlier part of the trial when Marco Haidenreich was on the stand and the detective Adrian Wirth, who was interviewing him in the day, you know, the days immediately after Toya's death, there were a few questions about Marco Haidenreich's stepfather being a bloke called Lerzi, who used to be a police sergeant in Cairns.

And the defense kind of made a bit about how the detectives investigating Marco were friendly with him. And, you know, they kind of used that to build rapport.

So Nathan Crane and remember here Nathan Crane is addressing the jury before the defense is so he's trying to preempt things that they may go to.

He's kind of gone through each one of these people that have come up during the trial, Marco Hardenreich, Evan McRae, Remy Fryer, a local school teacher, another one, and kind of pointed to all the evidence that the Crown says means they cannot have

committed this murder. And in a lot of cases, that's, you know, just evidence around phone and car movements.

You know, they're saying Evan McRae was at home with his mother all day, and here's the phone records to show that his car wasn't seen heading north.

Remy Fry, again, was in the Wongeti area visiting his mum, but they're saying that his movements home to Caranda just didn't match the handset pings from Toya's phone.

And then they spent a lot of time on Marco Hardenreich.

You know, of course, we heard he was on that hike that day, heading up to Spring Creek Falls with his friend Joel Kumen. And they're saying, look, there's just no DNA evidence.

There's no DNA of Marco's on any of the, you know, the stick or anything at the grave site.

The Crown puts that the reason Marco's DNA is on the dog lead is because he handled it afterwards, after it was found, took it to the police station.

You know, his DNA was found in other places because he lived with Toya and they had that close personal relationship.

But they just said that there is no evidence that he was in the Wongetty area at the time. And then, of course, they took us to all those messages.

You know, we saw a year's worth of messages between Toy Accordingly and Marco Hardenreich. And Nathan Crane said, look, we know Marco uses swear words.

And just a quick language warning here, in a whole year's worth of message

between Toy Accordingly and Marco Hardenreich, they just used the word shit three times in all these text exchanges.

And Nathan Crane is putting to the jury that this is a relationship of respect between Toya and Marco Hardenreich.

And that even in Toya's messages to her, I guess, potential new love interest, Tyson Franklin, even there, she's kind of speaking about Marco Hardenreich in a respectful way, and I guess expressing that she feels bad about the way things are panning out.

Yeah, Tyson Franklin, the podiatrist who Toy accordingly had been chatting to in the week leading up to

her death. And, I mean, Chris, you know, you mentioned before that this is the prosecution's last chance to talk to the jury.
You know, the defense stands up after them.

They don't have an idea of what the defense is going to do. So, yeah, often what a prosecution team will do in a closing is trying to, you know, kind of get ahead of

the defense as well. And I noticed something else that was mentioned was this glow stick that was found on the beach.

And Nathan Crane, the prosecutor, described that as basically a piece of beach detritus. You know, there's mandarin peels, there's this, there's this.

It's, you know, telling the jury it's not something that they needed to consider. And Chris, you know, Nathan Crane, as you say, talked for about a full court day.
And then we had Greg Maguire, KC,

stand up and start talking to the jury about why Raj Winder Singh is not guilty of the murder of Toy accordingly.

And he started this by telling a Sherlock Holmes story about a racehorse called Silverblaze that was killed. What's going on here? Where's he going?

It wasn't immediately clear to me either. He was throwing back to this 1892 Arthur Conan Doyle book, which I have to admit I haven't read.

But he soon explained that, yeah, in this story, it was a racehorse who was killed, and they've called in Sherlock Holmes to try and find out what had happened.

And, you know, Sherlock's made the point, well, the dog didn't bark. There was a dog there, and that can only mean that the

dog knew the person responsible.

And he's kind of made the segue to Indy in describing Indy as the silent witness in this case, which I think we actually had a listener question about a bit earlier on.

And he's pointed to the mystery around how Indy came to be tied up.

And Greg McGuire is really putting here that Indy was a big dog, not just a big dog, but a huge dog that was kind of noted by various witnesses during the trial for her size.

And that why would Rajwinder Singh being on the beach, you know, what for what reason would he choose or even be able to physically kind of overpower Toya and Indy together?

And kind of beginning to put a picture together that Rajwinder Singh as a lone assailant can't possibly explain what's happened in this case. Aaron Ross Powell, yeah.

Greg Maguire, Casey, went in this kind of whole negative fact arc, you know, this reference to the Sherlock Holmes story, the dog not barking, you know, talking about Indy, talking about no injuries to Raj Winder Singh that we'd heard of presented in the evidence of this trial.

Also, no knife being found, questioning kind of where Raj Winder Singh would have got a knife from, never known to carry a knife.

What else did he talk about on the beach? I mean, I mentioned the glow stick briefly, the things that the prosecution was kind of trying to get ahead of the defense on.

I mean, how do they go with that?

Well, there's a few things here that the defence and prosecution are really urging the jury to

consider very differently. So Nathan Crane, the Crown Prosecutor, was talking about red herrings.
He's just saying, look, the glow stick really doesn't help with anything.

It's just a glow stick that happened to be on the beach where she was laid.

Whereas Greg McGuire and the defense are kind of saying, no, you should consider that glow stick. You know, pig hunters use glow sticks.
And it kind of takes a different emphasis in the defence

view of things. And I think the same thing goes for a lot of the witnesses that we heard from during the trial who were at Wangeti Beach that day.

Remember, we heard them describe kind of different people they saw,

different cars that they spotted.

Some of these people described people that maybe had a kind of vague sort of resemblance to either Toya or Rajwinder Singh, but there were kind of notable differences.

Nathan Crane really explained that as like, look, these people were essentially having a day at the beach, minding their own business.

These weren't things that they felt the need to commit to memory. And so when they're asked about these things,

you know, a week later, there are kind of gaps and things don't quite make sense.

And he's essentially saying to the jury, look, people saw a lot of things, but none of it, you know, you can really draw on.

No one remembers seeing a blue Alfa Romeo, for instance. Whereas Greg Maguire is kind of framing it differently.

He's saying, well, look, these people that were described, and for example, Christophe Huber and Rosaria Macarone, the couple who were there and saw this man in beige clothing kind of staring at them really unnervingly.

And they describe that man as being dressed unusually for the beach with long sleeves and long pants. And he's saying, no, actually, like this is a guy that...

hasn't been followed up. Like, what of him? Could he be someone else who's potentially linked to this case?

So the defense is really pointing the jury at some of these pieces of evidence that the Crown says are unhelpful in concluding anything one way or the other. And he's saying, no, look,

what about the car?

He put some of these questions to the lead detective Gary Hall at the end of the evidence. He's like, what about the Subaru? Did you ever follow up that?

And he's kind of introducing, I guess, all these variables that he wants the jury to think about. Yeah, he's also been kind of pointed to how difficult this investigation would have been as well.

You know, how hard it is to kind of investigate something like this and also how hard it is to kind of present all of this evidence to a jury, kind of pointing out to the fact that, you know, potentially witnesses have remembered things differently.

I mean, the thing that sticks out to me is this conversation around the search of Lake Placid.

Now, this is an area where the prosecution says Raj Winder Singh turned into about the same time that the Toy Accordingly's phone stopped pinging off of the cell towers.

And the prosecution's suggestion is that this is where the phone was discarded or some of Toy Accordingly's possessions were discarded.

And, you know, Greg McGuire's pointed to the fact that we kind of heard different stories about whether or not that area was searched.

That's right. We heard during the trial evidence from Carl Bishop from the Cairns Water Police, who kind of oversaw some of these searches.
And he gave evidence.

He was asked, divers were sent up to Lake Placid. They were briefed, but we didn't send them in because of crocodiles.

But Greg McGuire has pointed to another witness from the actual police diving team who gave evidence about a week later in the trial and actually said they did search a part of the the Barren River at Lake Placid Road.

And he's kind of pointed to this as, you know, potentially, I guess, not a deliberate attempt by the prosecution to mislead the jury, but as a bit of a slip-up.

And he's kind of saying, well, if they can kind of...

you know, accidentally omit things, what of the police? And he made a quote during his closing address, Greg Maguire, where he said, you know, the Crown case is really, trust us, trust the science.

And he said, haven't we heard a lot of that over the years?

Because, of course, the Crown case is very heavily heavily reliant on things like Timing Advance, which we've heard is that technology that the mobile phone network relies on to operate so that calls and transmissions all work and they don't interrupt one another.

And that's really how they're establishing the location of that phone

to wear Cordingley's phone as it's moving away from Wongetty Beach. And Greg Maguire is essentially, you know, saying the Crown is asking us to trust them

in too many places. Now, interestingly, Nathan Crane actually did spend quite a lot of time, I guess, trying to demonstrate to the jury what the Crown says is the accuracy of timing advance.

And the way he did that was to bring up the CCTV footage from earlier that day, the 21st of October 2018, and toy accordingly's phone records and kind of showing points in time where we know where she was.

For example, all her pings

in the middle of the night, the night before she passed away, where we presume she was at home sleeping, and the kind of distance that the call charge records are saying her phone was from her house.

And then again, earlier that morning, when she's gone to the market, we know where she is because she's on CCTV.

And look, look, this is where the timing advance says she is. So he's kind of saying, if

it was accurate earlier in the day where we know where...

where she was and we know where the phone was that the jury can rely on it for the the location of these final three pings as well.

So there's a bit of a difference in the way, you know, the prosecution and defence are going at these things, where the Crown is kind of trying to demonstrate that these things stack up and the defence is just trying to put that reasonable doubt, saying, look, you know, pointing to little mistakes that might be made and kind of opening up to the jury to potentially not trust broader elements of both the police investigation and the Crown case.

Yeah, it's another kind of example, I guess, Chris, of the prosecution trying to kind of get ahead of the defense when they're doing their closing.

Because, I mean, even Greg Maguire referenced this in his closing, this kind of importance of having the last word, saying that, you know, he kind of advised Rajwinder Singh to not give evidence because, you know, having the last word is important.

And I mean, why did he do that? What's the relevance of that in this situation? Yeah, so in Queensland, the order of closing addresses depends on whether or not

the accused person chooses to give or call evidence. Had Rajwinder Singh called witnesses or given evidence himself, the the order of these closing addresses swaps around.

So instead of having Nathan Crane go first and kind of the Crown having to preemptively guess and cover off arguments that they don't know whether may or may not be made, the defence would actually have to give their address to the jury first, and then Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane would have the final closing address in that situation.

Right. Okay, great.
Well, that's a, yeah, thank you for the explanation. I did kind of wonder that when we were hearing Greg Maguire kind of explaining that point.

And, I mean, as we've discussed in other episodes, the episode we did on Tuesday, we have heard from Raj Windersing in this trial, not in the courtroom, he hasn't given evidence, but we've heard this covert recording of him in a police cell.

This is when he was arrested, brought back to Australia and locked in the Cairns police station with an undercover police officer who had a recording device on.

That recording... Chris that we heard played to the court was really hard to hear.

You know, it's Raj Windersing talking about how he says he witnessed two masked men murdering Tori Court in the and Ran.

And the audio, as we talked about in the episode earlier this week, not great, quite hard to hear at times.

And Greg Maguire taking us to parts of that recording, to the transcript of things that we actually couldn't hear at the time.

That's right. You'll recall the jury got given that transcript.
So they were able to follow along. There's the 40 minutes or so was being played in court.

And there are parts where, you know, there's a lot of banging in the background. There's a lot of, there's a bit of rugby league commentary on the radio.

So in the open courtroom it's it's actually quite hard to hear bits of it and there you know there are parts that we the media just won't quote from if we're not 100% sure what we're hearing and but Greg Maguire is reading from the transcript so we actually heard a few quotes that that were new to us and you know at one point Rajwinder Singh is for example because he's explaining how

to this undercover officer that He didn't kill her. He just saw it happen and he ran in fear and he's saying, look, you know, if it was a local person in here, maybe things would be different.

And he's kind of raised the specter of racial discrimination.

You know, he's explaining that he knew he was wanted for murder in India. He thought that the killers would be caught in a few days and that he'd be able to come back to Australia.

But that, you know, he's then realised that.

They were looking at all the cars that were passing through that had gone to the beach and that he was missing, so they suspected him.

And then he goes on actually to express, you know, I guess some, he said he doesn't know the person who died, but he kind of expresses,

you know, a sense of condolences for her family. Now, these are things that Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane says are, you know, examples of Rajwinder Singh being a deceiving man, that

his explanation for what happened is really an extent to which he understands the case against him.

You know, he's saying, you know, the references to the car, the fact that by this point he's had more than four years to think about what he might say if he were ever caught.

And he's saying

the bits that he really doesn't explain are the presence of his DNA being on that stick, being essentially not a distant point on the beach from what's happening, but actually right there where Toy accordingly is buried.

But also just the nature of the way he's left.

You know, he's describing himself as being an Innisfael resident to this undercover officer and, you know, the fact that he has a wife and three kids, but he hasn't spoken to them.

So I guess both the Crown and

the defense would say this undercover recording, which is all we're going to hear from Rajwinder seeing at this trial, is is really important, but of course, drawing very different conclusions from what is presented.

Yeah, and we had Greg Maguire, KC as well, asking the question of the jury, too.

You know, if you were, you know, someone who had, you know, immigrated to India and you were living there and then you came back to Australia and found out you were wanted for murder in India, would that be a place that you would go back to as well?

Chris, as we were going through the closing arguments from both the defence and the prosecution, I mean, there was one point where the defence kind of really detailed the injuries that Toya Cordingley suffered on the beach.

We've also had exhibits shown throughout the closings as well. And, you know, some of them have been, you know, images of Toya's hands and the like, you know, after she had been murdered.

It's so confronting to hear these stories just told in the way that they have been told throughout. these closing arguments.
But, you know, they've also been seen in these ways as well.

You know, we've talked about Toya Cordingley's family being in the courtroom. How have they reacted and responded to some of that?

Yeah, look, they've been leaving during the trial.

They've kind of been warned when photos from the scene, particularly the more graphic ones, are going to be shown on the screen and a larger number of them will file out.

There was actually a point during Nathan Crane's address where pictures of her hands, you know, after her death were put up. And it kind of happened a little bit suddenly.

There wasn't a lot of warning and yet there kind of was a visceral reaction from some people, including I noticed Toya's father, Troy, accordingly, in the front row.

All this has taken place over a couple of days. So it's, you know, people are coming in and out at different times.

Some of Toya's family didn't,

they either didn't come in for the defense closing at all or they left partway through.

Yeah, look, at times it's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for different people as kind of things go from,

you know, explaining points in the narrative that perhaps are blanks that the jury needs to draw conclusions to kind of the recapping of some of the more um you know the hard to listen to evidence about how violently um and ferociously she was killed to the kind of that emotional um you know the the recapping of the text messages between toy accordingly and tyson franklin for example which i can imagine for many in the room um almost feels a bit like a

you know you you're reading someone's diary, you know, messages that were probably never meant to be seen by anyone else, but they're now being broadcast in a room full of people.

Yeah,

it's such a kind of almost perverse insight into people's lives as we're kind of exploring all of this stuff.

I mean, we've talked a bit about the kind of the reactions from the gallery, people in the room watching this.

How's Rajwinder Singh been as he's watched this unfold, these kind of dueling narratives through the closing arguments?

Look, he doesn't appear to give much away. It's just a lot of time that he spends kind of just looking ahead.

Very hard to read his face.

It's really hard to tell.

You know, a couple of times he can kind of be seen dabbing his eyes, but really, for the most part, he's just kind of sitting there looking rather emotionless. He's a very hard man to read.

And I guess there's no evidence being put to the court that we should, you know, how we should read anything into him.

You know, the defense has labeled him in their closing as a vegetarian peacenick, you know, a calm nurse who,

you know, no one... No one had a bad word to say about him.
You know, no one knew him to be violent. Everyone knew him to be a calm man.

And Greg Maguire really characterized the way he remained calm and spoke about his relationship with God and his spiritual beliefs during that watch house recording where there's all this chaos unfolding in the background and a lot of banging and yelling and screaming and yet Raj Winder Singh is just presenting this calm kind of softly spoken defense of himself to this undercover officer.

And Nathan Crane kind of characterized him as, well, did anyone really know what he was like?

You know, his family has given evidence that they didn't know him to be a violent man, but how were they to know what urges he had and how he suppressed them and what he was capable of? So

really a lot there that has been put to the jury. That's, I guess, one of those classic jury things for them to decide

what they can conclude from all that.

Yeah, there's still a little bit more to unfold.

We're nearing the end of the defence closing, likely to continue for a short period this morning on Thursday morning, and then we'll get into judges' directions and the jury will go away and have to make that decision.

And Chris, there's a question coming up that I think

kind of gets to the decision they have to make. And we'll come to that in a bit.
I mean, I've really enjoyed getting all of the questions that we've been sent to the case of at abc.net.au.

The inbox is really, yeah, really feeling the weight of it over the last couple of days, and I want to run through a few of them with you now, Chris. There's one here from Russ.

He writes, Hi, Chris and Stocky. I've been following the case with interest for some time and appreciate your detailed sharing of the court proceedings.

My question is, was Rajwinder Singh known to own or carry a ceremonial knife, a kerpan, which is worn around the neck? Has there been any discussion about this during the trial?

Hey, Russ, it's only actually come up, I believe once. There were some questions asked of some of his family members by Greg Maguire when they came to court.

And he was asked about various types of knives, including a ceremonial knife. Essentially, the evidence was that no one said that they knew him to carry a knife,

ceremonial or otherwise.

And actually, one of the interesting comments from his wife, Sook Deep Corps, which Greg Maguire brought back in his closing address to the jury, was that, you know, this was a man not only known not to carry a knife, but his wife was asked about whether they had fishing knives at home, because we recall that forensic officers took a bunch of knives from their house for testing

and her response was in our household there's not even the concept of going fishing so

they're just you know the idea of a fishing knife is just not a thing for us

that's really all it's really gone to about knives and rajwinder singh so the yeah defense kind of saying he's he's not a man known to carry one yeah thank you chris great question russ so i appreciate you you getting in touch with that one and uh and chris another one here from peter which was the question i hinted at earlier.

Peter writes, hello, I have a question about beyond reasonable doubt.

With a lot of the evidence being circumstantial, will the judge give the jury guidance on what beyond reasonable doubt means before they make their decision?

Are you able to explain what beyond reasonable doubt means? It seems like something that could vary from person to person.

I don't want to preempt what Justice Lincoln Crowley will say in his summing up to the jury, because I imagine he will spend quite a bit of time probably addressing this exact point.

But generally, when it comes up in trials, it's put to the jury that they're ordinary English words and carry their ordinary English meaning.

That's ways I've heard many judges explain it to juries in previous trials.

I guess in that sense, it can vary from person to person, but it's really one for each juror to consider whether they do have any reasonable doubt about the proposition being put to them. Great.

Thank you, Chris. Great question, Peter.
It is a really good point.

And, you know, as you say, Chris, you have potentially something that can vary person to person when they're considering the kind of the ordinary English language use of all of that.

If you have any questions yourself, please get in touch with the ksob at abc.net.au. We really do love hearing from you.

And on the topic of feedback and conversation, we are running a listener survey at the moment as well. So please get in touch.

I'll pop the link in the episode description for today so it's easy to find. So jump on that, click through.
It doesn't take very long. I mean, I think it takes you more than five minutes.

You might be doing something a little bit wrong. But yeah, jump in there.
Just let us know your thoughts on the podcast.

We really want to kind of make this more suited to you you know kind of hitting your interests and all that a little bit more you are running out of time for that i know all of you and the first suggestion would have immediately jumped into the episode description and not thought about leaving this until until any later so i know for for 98 of you i'm sure you've completed the survey but if you've decided to leave this to the last minute this is in fact the last minute because we will be closing that on sunday so don't miss out i'd really love to hear your thoughts on this so we can make this pod you know even more suited to your your tastes and desires and and while you're making the most of this final opportunity to jump into that servo the link in the episode description at the moment uh chris tester will take us through what's coming up over the next couple of days well as he touched on stocky greg maguire still has a little bit of his closing address to go um you know he'll get we'll get the jury when they're nice and fresh on thursday morning for those i guess final remarks and then we'll uh we'll head into the judge's summing up of the case.

Justice Lincoln Crowley will, I guess, give directions to the jury about bits of evidence and

how they need to take that into account.

And I guess just broadly kind of recap the legal aspects that they need to keep in mind. And then he's told the jury they'll likely go out to begin their deliberations at some point on Friday.
Yeah,

really important stage of the trial, Chris. So thank you for taking us through all of that.
If you want to keep up to speed with the case of Toye's murder, grab yourself the ABC Listen Apps.

Best place to listen to not just this podcast, but a great range of other podcasts as well.

If you're looking for some listening to keep you going after you listen to this, I can highly recommend the new season of Unravel Huntsman.

It's the work of Rachel Brown, who I worked with on Mushroom Case Daily, and it's something that her and I spoke a lot about.

There's actually an episode in the K-Sov feed at the moment where you can listen to a conversation that Rach and I had

behind some microphones, but also in person a lot while we were in Morwall. So it's all about how Rach has made that podcast and the first episode is there as well.

So highly recommend jumping in and grabbing that as well.

The case of Toya's murder is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. It's reported by Chris Tester and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.
Our supervising producer is Greg Muller.

Welcome, Greg, and our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson. Thank you to the Queensland Newsroom and to Audio Studios manager, Eric George.

This episode was produced on the lands of the Gimoi, Walabara, Yedinji, Turibul, and Wurundjuri people.