Toyah's Murder: The covert recording of Rajwinder Singh in a police cell

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After Rajwinder Singh was arrested and charged with Toya Cordingley's murder, he was put in a cell at the Cairns police station with another man beside him. and the two started chatting.

That man was a police officer recording their conversation. And And now, that conversation has been played to the court in Raj Winder Singh's 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.

We've had some incredibly dramatic evidence as the Crown has closed its case against Rajwinder Singh.

This is a very big moment in this trial and the ABC's Chris Tester has been there for us following it all. Chris, can you wrap up the last few days for us in 60 seconds?

We've been taken back to the watch house cell where Rajwinder Singh found himself after his extradition to Australia from India in early 2023, where he offered his version of what happened that day Toy Accordingly was killed at Wongetty Beach to an undercover police officer in a recording that he wasn't aware of.

And we've spent a couple of days poring over forensic examination of DNA samples connected to the case, learning a bit more about what was found and also what wasn't.

And after more than 80 witnesses across three weeks, we've now heard all the evidence in the Crown case.

Thank you, Chris. Yeah, such a big moment of any trial, the closing of a case.
You know, we're working towards the final closing arguments.

But before we get there, I mean, we've had some, you know, really significant pieces of evidence presented to the court over the last few days.

You know, this budding romance, you know, a witness who says police didn't listen to her. And also this recording of Raj Winder Singh.

in a police station after he is extradited from India and arrested. This is a building that is next to the courtroom, the courthouse that we've been hearing this entire trial in.

There's an undercover police officer who's in the cell with Rajwinder Singh, and Rajwinder Singh starts telling him what he says unfolded on the beach in October 2018.

It is a key part of the defense case. Take us there.
What did we hear?

Well, this was a conversation that we were told, the court was told, went for about three hours on an afternoon in March 2023 after Rajwinder Singh was brought back.

The undercover police officer who Rajwinder Singh spoke to that day gave evidence.

And he gave evidence under the alias Jacob Turner and on a video screen with his camera switched off so he couldn't see his face.

You know, the court being told that he's still an undercover operative at the moment. And I guess that kind of sets the scene a little bit.
He's explaining a bit about the situation.

He goes into the watch house with, you know, a recording device concealed on him, so Rajwinder Singh wouldn't know that he was was being recorded um and jacob turner in this conversation we can hear is kind of pretending to be a bloke who's up in cannes um he would came here to visit his mum and he told rajwinder singh that he just loses it sometimes so he's he's portraying himself as a as a prisoner in the watch house and kind of works to strike up a rapport with rajwinder singh uh and you know he's kind of bit by bit getting to these questions about well you know i'm i'm glad i'm in here with you you sound like a nice guy but what are you in in here for?

And what does Rajwinder Singh tell him in that moment? It takes a bit of questioning to kind of get to the moment. And then he says, they think I killed someone.

And Jacob Turner, the officer, kind of sounds a little surprised, but kind of starts asking some more probing questions about where was it and things like that.

And we start to get a bit of a version of events from Rajwinder Singh here. But interestingly, a lot of the conversation is quite hard to follow because this is a watch house cell.

It's a concealed recording device. Of course, you get all the normal sounds of the watch house, some banging, some yelling, and some footy commentary on the radio as well.

Yeah, this is the thing that, I mean, I learned about prison cells

in the process of hearing this is that, you know, there is a radio in prison cells. And on this particular day, the rugby league is being played on the radio in the prison cells.

You get this like, yeah, rugby league commentary in the background.

I mean, Chris, we heard in the openings openings of this trial, you know, from the defense and from the prosecution, that Raj Windising says he kind of witnesses two people murdering Toy Court on that beach.

I mean, is that clear in the recording? Could you hear that?

You can. You can hear that he says that these killers,

he calls them killers, they had covered faces. He said, I don't know the person who was killed and I don't know who

did the killing.

He describes about how running was his biggest mistake and he says that because I ran, that's why they think I did it. And he mentions being from India.

In that kind of rapport-building part of the conversation, he said, I'm from Innisfail. I've got, you know, a wife and kids.

And he kind of gets to this moment where he's describing about the fear and having to run for his life. I guess there's...
a lack of some detail, but he really clearly mentions seeing it happen.

It happened right in front of me and that he ran away.

And I mean, we haven't got to the closing arguments just yet. They'll be coming in the next day or so.

But, I mean, Chris, I remember from the openings, the prosecution kind of referencing this recording and then saying, well, look, it's our case that he lied.

So that's where they're approaching this from. They're saying, the prosecution is saying that the story he's told this person in the watch house is a lie.
That's right.

And I guess we also get a little bit of an insight into Rajwinda seeing at least the man as he was in early 2023.

He goes into a bit of kind of talking about almost like a spiritual belief around, you know, what happens to us in a past life.

We pay for it in this one. We hear about 40 minutes of audio.
It's a three-hour conversation that's kind of condensed down.

I guess the court was told irrelevant bits are sort of edited out to make it, you know. not have to sit through three full hours of audio.
And the jury's given a transcript.

So we haven't seen the transcript. I'm not sure exactly what it says, but the jury is given a transcript to follow along this conversation.

And it kind of goes, bits go in and out of talking about the incident, talking about Wongetty Beach, and then kind of Rush Winter Singh taking the conversation in other directions.

And the jury's been told that the transcript itself is not the evidence. What they hear on the tape is evidence.
The transcript is an aid.

If they hear something or they think they've heard something different to what's on the transcript, they need to go with what they hear with their ears. Yeah, yeah.

And the jury was given the transcript before hearing the recording. So they had that and they could could sort of follow along with that transcript, right? That's right.
Yeah.

Thank you, Chris. And I mean, we talk about, you know, the prosecution mentioning this recording in their openings, also mentioned by the defense, Raj Windersing's defense team.

You know, it's kind of outlining their defense to the murder charge. You might remember them saying this is an example of a wrong place, wrong time.

And I mean, as well as this recording, we've had a huge amount of DNA evidence kind of presented to the jury over the last few days.

Now, this is what the prosecution says they'd produce to show that, you know, Raj Winder Singh was at Toy Accordingly's grave, you know, DNA from sticks that is more likely to be his than anybody else's.

And we've heard this evidence kind of presented, rolled out in court in

huge detail. And I don't think I can really undersell the level of detail that this has been explained to the jury in.

I think it's an entire two days of evidence from, you know, one of the DNA witnesses explaining what DNA is, how they interpret results, where it comes from, all of those things.

And I mean, we're going to save you all of that detail. We're not going to talk to you or talk out you for two whole days about that.
So Chris,

what can you break down? What can you tell us about what the jury heard from the DNA evidence?

That's right, Stocky. That's Angelina Keller.
She's a forensic scientist with Forensic Services Queensland, the Queensland Forensics Lab.

She set the record in this trial, at least, for the longest time at the witness box. She started on Thursday afternoon and only wrapped up sort of early Monday afternoon.

She went through pretty much one by one kind of the results for every sample that was tested.

So we're talking, you know, items from the beach, the Blue Alpha Romeo of Rajwinder Singh, the Honda CRV, the car that was driven by Marco Hardenreich, Toy Accordingly's boyfriend, and also some clothing and items that were found at Rajwinder Singh's home in Innisfale.

So we've gone through, you know, all those items in quite a lot of detail.

And I guess one of the things that Angelina Keller was at pains to point out in her responses to questions from both the prosecution and the defense is that this isn't absolute.

So each result was given what we heard a likelihood ratio. So to take it back a step, during this investigation, authorities collected 91 DNA reference samples of people connected to the case.

Now, obviously, one of those was Toya Cordingleys, Rajwinda Singh, Marco Hardenreich,

Evan McRae, just some names that have come up during this trial, but also other people who've touched things and been at the scenes,

Ms. Cordingley's parents,

police officers, all of those Wongetti locals that we heard

volunteered DNA samples. They were in there.

So we had a list of 91 people. It was actually showed to the court at the very end of the evidence.
Won't read every single name to you. And they were able to test a sample, so say,

you know, an item from the beach, and look at the profile and see whether it connected or matched up with any of these 91 names. Now, the tricky thing about the results is twofold.

One is it's not in absolute. So a lot of people, I think, have this idea that either your DNA is there or it's not.

And Angelina Keller was saying, well, look, we present these results as a likelihood ratio. So perhaps one of the most significant

DNA results that the Crown is relying on is from a stick that was found at Toy Accordingly's sandy burial mound that we heard. And there was a sample of DNA taken from that.

The result was that it was 3.7 billion times more likely that Rajwinder Singh had contributed to that DNA sample than that he didn't. And that's not to say that it's his DNA or that it's not his DNA.

We even heard examples where

a DNA sample was greater than 100 billion times more likely to be from, say, Toy Accordingly or Marco Hardenreich. And that's the most absolute that the evidence gets in this case.

But then there's a slew of other profiles where there was Angelina Keller told the court that there was such limited information that for all of these names, the likelihood ratios were quite small, closer to the number one, making them far less conclusive than the other results.

Yeah, and you mentioned the sticks that are stuck kind of around where Toye Accordingly's body was covered with sand. This was on like a bit of a slope.

And so what we've heard from the prosecution is that these sticks were kind of put at the base of this kind of mound, basically, to stop it sliding off.

And then another kind of log or stick that was placed on the top. And are those the sticks, you know, when you're talking about this, this 3.7 billion, are those the sticks you're talking about?

No, so those are the, I think you're referring to the three logs. They've been called in evidence as log A, log B and log C.
They were also tested and results were presented for them.

But this was kind of a jagged stick, which was perhaps more like a branch.

So there was a sample taken from that, and that was the one that returned the highest LR, the highest likelihood ratio to have had a contribution from Rajwinder Singh.

And Chris, I mean, there were so many people that contributed DNA as part of this investigation. And it sounded a lot like Ms.
Keller had kind of gone through a lot of them and were ruling them out.

This is people like Marco Heidenreich, Toy Accordingly's boyfriend, also the folks from around Wong Giddy Beach that we spoke about in our last episode.

Was she saying that the profiles that they got supported those people being non-contributors, so they were kind of effectively ruled out?

Not necessarily. Sometimes the likelihood ratio was, she described it as kind of being like a seesaw tipping to the left or the right, which means it's less likely that they've contributed.

In some cases, they were excluded.

And I guess quite interestingly, it was the results in terms of what they didn't find in some places. For example, there was no kind of likelihood ratio of

toy accordingly's DNA being found in Raj Windersing's car.

You know, similarly, Marco Hardenreich wasn't returning high levels of, you know, likelihood ratio on the beach.

We did hear some evidence of Marco Hardenreich's DNA, for example, on the dog lead, which we heard he later took Indy the dog on that lead to the police station

when he went there that morning on a hat, which he'd found on the beach.

And we kind of heard evidence that when people are domestic partners, it's kind of tricky because they will be exposed

to one another.

And DNA can be left in that way. So for example, we heard that while there's not been any evidence of Marco Harden-Reich jumping in Toya's car at any point, his DNA was

returning a high likelihood ratio from

her seat belt buckle. So there are a lot of different kind of competing inferences here.

And the jury had a bit of work to do to kind of pour through the different permutations of what was found and what these likelihood ratios would indicate.

Yeah, and I mean even after the two days of Ms. Keller's evidence, we were then graced with another DNA expert from New Zealand.

And Chris, am I writing that this is to analyse Toyokauding Lee's fingernails because they couldn't get much from them in the analysis that we're doing in Australia?

That's right. We heard about a couple of different pieces of different samples of DNA that were sent to other laboratories outside Queensland for further testing.

And and some of them were sent to New Zealand for this lab that can test what was described as degraded DNA or DNA that started to break down

and it can also do this testing that focuses specifically on the Y chromosome. So they sent these fingernail clippings to New Zealand.
They were able to isolate the male DNA from one of those samples.

So that wasn't the only sample that was sent there, by the way. There were a couple of others, but yeah, they focused on this fingernail sample.

And they look at the 27 genetic markers on the Y chromosome and run this test twice so the first time they ran this test on on on one of the fingernail samples 26 of the 27 markers that were identified matched those of Rajwinder Singh and then they run the test again and 27 of the 27 markers matched Rajwinder Singh now they go in evidence with the the the more conservative results so we heard that the the 26 is the one that

is presented in the in the DNA report because because that was the one that was able to be replicated.

But we also heard about some kind of lower level results again, where they were able to isolate fewer of those 27 Y chromosome markers.

So I think one, for example, only five were able to be revealed in this test. And they again matched Rajwinda Singh.

Yeah, no, thank you for explaining it, Chris. Like, it's, you know, it's so, it can be so dense, and the way you've kind of taken us through it there.

I want to talk a bit about this guy, Tyson, who's given evidence over the last few days. Now, we've made kind of some passing references to him in the pods so far.

He's the guy that Toy Accordingly was supposed to pick up on Sunday, October 21st, the day that she was murdered. So she never arrives at the airport.
And it sounded like he was...

quite a big part of her life in the in the weeks leading up to her death. They had not long met, but they were chatting a lot.
It sounded like they had kind of this like budding romance coming out.

And, you know, he'd even spent a night at her house while her boyfriend Marco was out of town. And I mean, this guy is a podiatrist or was a podiatrist.

And this conversation between him and Toya started after she'd come in for an appointment and then he had forgotten to tell her what shoes to wear.

And he looked her up and messaged her after the appointment to kind of give her that information. That's right, Stocky.

We heard about this appointment that Toy accordingly made earlier in October 2018.

She saw Tyson Franklin as a podiatrist and we heard they kind of struck up a friendship there, actually bonding over Harry Potter from that first initial meeting.

And then, as you say, we heard evidence that this kind of, you know, friendship connection escalated to them exchanging hundreds of messages a day, you know, into the night until about 11 p.m.,

kind of about a week before her death. And yeah, again, the significance of Toy Cordingly intending to collect Tyson Franklin from Cairns airport that evening is perhaps centered on this text message.

We've heard she sent Marco Hardenreich, her boyfriend, a text message at 3.17 p.m.

that day, the 21st of October, letting him know that she was due to collect her friend Tyson.

We heard evidence from Marco that he didn't see that text until much later in the evening and that he didn't know at the time who Tyson was.

But it's critical because it's that kind of last, it's Tuercording Lee's last known. message to anybody.

So it's kind of a bit of a time marker that 3.17 p.m. the Crown case would be that she's still alive at that moment in time.

Now, we saw Tyson Franklin arrive at Cairns airport because that CCTV footage from the airport was played to the jury.

You know, we heard about his Uber receipt. He made his own way home.
So police that night investigating at that stage, it's still Toy Accordingly's disappearance.

They've turned up at Tyson Franklin's house. And that's kind of how he came into the investigation.

And I guess from there, this kind of relationship that he's forming with Toy Accordingly has been revealed.

And I mean, you know, you're talking about this kind of relationship being revealed, revealed, but initially it sounds like he sort of misrepresents some of the conversations they're having because he's asked, you know, is she unhappy in this relationship?

Do you ever talk about her, you know, not being happy with Marco Heidenreich, who we've heard from earlier in this trial?

And, you know, am I right in thinking that he initially told police, no, no, no, we never spoke anything about that. And then later changed his story because they had spoken about that.

They had had conversations about that.

Yeah, the evidence was that he initially kind of minimized, I I guess, the extent that this relationship had developed and, you know, it was kind of put that part of that is, you know, he didn't want Marco necessarily finding out.

In the end,

we heard about these hundreds of messages.

I don't think we saw every single one, but a lot of them were displayed in evidence in the court and the defence did kind of cross-examine in quite fine detail a lot of the the nature of these conversations.

We heard that they went on a

they went on a

walk up a to a swimming hole in Cairns, Crystal Cascades, where they had a swim. And then, you know, later that night, they spent time at each other's houses.

And we kind of saw a lot of these texts, Toy accordingly kind of explaining, lamenting the timing of their meeting and, you know, comments from both of them about how deeply that they'd connected with one another.

And then I guess, yeah, Tyson Franklin being cross-examined about, you know, exactly the extent to which she revealed.

any unhappiness she had. We've heard evidence from other people as well that Toy accordingly was thinking about living alone at this time.

And, you know, there was some trepidation that she had about telling her boyfriend, Marco Hayden-Reich, about that, because they, of course, shared a home together.

Yeah, and we heard about this again from, I think it was one of Toya's cousins. And this is a woman called Sarah Brumhall.

Now, she was actually overseas at the time of Toya's murder, but had returned to Cairns for Toya's funeral. And Sarah told this story about meeting Marco Hayden-Reich following Toya's death.

And Marco is cleaning out Toya's stuff, basically, you know, looking at donating her clothes to charity at the back of the house.

And Sarah tells the court that when she was out the back of the house talking to Marco, she talks about how, you know, she heard that Toya wasn't happy in the relationship and she tells Marco, look, I don't think that's a reflection on you.

It's just, you know, she might have needed some time alone.

And on hearing that from Sarah, Marco sounds like he reacts quite strongly. I mean, he's sort of surprised by that, talks about, you know, what are you talking about?

And this sounds like, at least in the way that, you know, Sarah recounts it to the court, something that kind of, you know, really stuck in her mind because she goes away and she actually reports that interaction back to the police who are investigating that, right, Chris?

That's right. We heard this was actually Toya's cousin Sarah Broomhall's first ever meeting with Marco Hardenreich.
So she was living in the Netherlands and flew back to Australia for the funeral. And

Marco and Sarah Broomhall actually sought one another out because they hadn't, they hadn't met before.

And she's, yeah, she said, look, now that she's passed, I can tell you this, that, you know, if it felt like she wanted to leave you, I think she just needed time to find herself.

And she told the court that Marco reacted by kind of waving his hands in the air and saying, you know, why the F didn't you tell me that earlier? You know, she never said anything like that.

She wanted to go to the police or she went to the police with that information.

And Greg Maguire in cross-examination was kind of saying, look, you didn't feel that you were being taken seriously.

And we heard that the police had kind of by that point told her, you know, we've looked into him and ruled him out as a suspect.

But not to be deterred, Sarah Broomhall confirmed that she wrote an email to the DPP, the Director of Public Prosecutions,

and made a statement to police about all this as recently as early November this year.

Yeah, that's not long before the start of this trial at all. I mean, Chris, just to remind us, I mean, yeah, we've spoken a lot about Marco Marco Heidenreich, you know, his alibi.

What has the court heard about his movements again?

Well,

he's told the court that he drove up past Wongetty that day, continued on to the Port Douglas area where he went hiking with a friend and his dog.

And you'll hear, of course, that he lost one of his dog's jersey, ran into the bush. They spent a lot of time looking and borrowing torches from friends.

you know, later in that evening, having given up and he's on his way back home to Cairns without the dog. And by this point, he's quite upset because he hasn't been able to reach Toya on her phone.

And Marcos told the court that that's where he spotted Toya's car still parked by the side of the Captain Cook Highway as he's passing Wongetty Beach. And by this time, it's quite dark.
Now,

the alibi about him being on a hike with Joel Kuman, the evidence that the Crown's relying on to support that, are these eight timestamped and geolocated photographs on Joel Kuman's phone.

The police have called evidence that they did a kind of forensic examination of that phone and didn't find any evidence that the

photos or data was manipulated in any way.

They've also looked at traffic cameras to plot the movements of different cars, where of course they've done that dragnet and looking at potential movements of cars that could have matched the pings from Toy Accordingly's phone.

Yeah, great. Thank you, Chris.
Yeah, helpful recap.

I mean, there's so much information that is kind of distributed throughout a trial like this, and being able to kind of refresh us on what we'd already heard is incredibly helpful, especially as we kind of built towards the final witness in the trial of Raj Winder Singh.

This is the lead detective on the case, Gary Hall. He's actually been up a few times.

He kind of gets recalled every now and then to enter different evidence into the trial and for the jury to look at.

And this time, quite a short kind of initial examination from the prosecutor, Nathan Crane.

And then he kind of, for lack of a better word, really went up against the defense barrister, Greg McGuire, who kind of started by flattering him a bit.

I thought this was quite interesting the way he described it. It's like, oh, you had this enormous task.
You had so many things to follow up, didn't you?

And he sort of agrees, you know, it was a big job. And then Greg Maguire just kind of really went to work, just sort of pulling on every loose thread that he could find throughout the investigation.

That's right. It wasn't super long in terms of the length of time that this cross-examination went for, but it was varied and it was, look, it was a quite hard line of questioning.

And he's essentially putting to him,

you know, probably more than a dozen different leads.

We heard evidence, of course, from a lot of those witnesses at Wongetty Beach a little earlier in the trial.

You know, some of them described cars that they saw in the car park or different people that they saw on the beach. And Greg Maguire is putting all of this to Gary Hall.

He's like, do you remember a blue Subaru? What about the guy in the beige pants and the beige long sleeve shirt? Did you ever find him?

He's asking, you know,

why didn't the defense know earlier about this injury to Evan McRae's hand? Of course, Evan McRae was that tradesman that police initially looked at and then ultimately decided he wasn't a suspect.

And Gary Hall had to field all these questions.

And Greg Maguire here is really trying to probe about all these other possible explanations of people in the area who may have had mental illnesses, who may have had drug problems, who may have had a propensity for violence, and essentially trying to broaden the net of all of the people that the police could have looked at during this investigation.

And Gary Hall had to field all these questions about all of the different little tracks of evidence that we've heard about during this trial.

Yeah, it's something, I mean, when this happens in court, I find myself feeling quite awkward because it's like, well, did you follow up this? Or, well, you know, we sort of, and then what about this?

And it's this kind of like, you know, this picking apart and this pulling apart.

And I mean, Chris, as you say, this is, you know, gives us an insight into where the kind of the defense is going with this.

And in the next couple of days, we'll be getting into the closing arguments will really hear how both the defense and the prosecution are summing up their various cases.

And I mean, the closing of a case, you know, the final witness in this case, Gary Hall, is a really big moment, one of the milestones.

And I mean, we can't forget that there is, you know, a young woman who's been murdered at the center of this.

Her family has been in the courtroom following along, watching all of this evidence be presented.

How have they taken this? How have they been?

Yeah, look,

they've followed along.

They're there every day, ever-present, A large number of supporters, as well as, you know, of course, Toya's mum and dad, Troy Cordingley and Vanessa Gardner, who were among the first witnesses called to give evidence in this trial.

And it was, you know, quite harrowing evidence about essentially them being at the beach when Toya's body was found.

There were times that they've actually left the room. Of course, when those photos of the crime scene were displayed, they will get up and leave.

And again, during this cross-examination of Gary Hall, again, I noticed Troy Cordingley, you know, get up and leave the room while that was going on.

So there are kind of moments that they do decide enough is enough and they are stepping out.

Yeah. Thank you, Chris.
Really appreciate having your, you know, your view inside this courtroom, really be able to take us.

to this place and you know kind of convey everything you know that not just we're talking about but also that you know the family of toy accordingly is is watching unfold in this room as well um you know we're now getting into the closing arguments this is the kind of penultimate moment of a trial.

And this is, you know, kind of a tense moment as well.

You know, we wonder, we kind of ask ourselves this question, will the accused or Rajwinder Singh be getting into the witness box and telling his story?

Will Rajwinder Singh give evidence?

No.

In short, Stocky, we've heard what we've heard from Rajwinder Singh, which was the undercover recording, and now anything else from him is going to come through his lawyer, Greg Maguire, in the defence closing.

So at the end of all the witnesses, the judge's associate formally puts that question to Rajwinder Singh. Do you intend to call or

give evidence? He stands up and then his counsel, Greg Maguire, answers on his behalf that no, they won't be doing that. So the case will proceed directly into closing addresses.

Okay, thank you, Chris.

Yeah, keen to kind of figure out how the timing of all this is going to work, what's going to happen over the next the following days when we'll be back with another episode of the case of.

But before we get to all of that, we have have to unlock the case of mailbag, the case of at abc.net.au.

We have had a heap of questions coming into the case of as the trial reaches this kind of critical stage. So Chris, I want to start with a question here from Alicia.

Alicia writes, love the pod, such a heartbreaking crime.

Can you confirm if Raj Winder Singh bought the plane ticket a long time before he fled or in the day slash days after the murder of Toy Accordingly?

Yeah, we've heard a lot of evidence about this, Alicia, because it's a critical part of the Crown case and what the Crown says was part of Raj Windersing's flight.

We actually heard the audio of him booking the ticket on the phone through a travel agency. So it was booked just after 11 o'clock on Monday, October the 22nd.

That's the morning after the Crown says Toy Cordingley was killed at the beach. And it's probably a couple of hours after Troy Cordingley has found Toya's body on the sand.

So he's booked that flight by phone, a couple of phone calls, and he's arranged it to go Cairns to Sydney, overnight in Sydney and then on to New Delhi the next day, Tuesday the 23rd of October.

Thank you, Chris. Great question, Alicia.

And again, these are the kind of questions I really appreciate because it gives us this opportunity to kind of clarify some details and help kind of refresh the timeline and the way events have unfolded in your mind.

You're hearing what's been presented to the court. Chris, another question here from Alison from Janjuk on the Great Ocean Road.

Hi team, terribly sad case you're bringing us this time, but one that is new on my radar as a Victorian.

You mentioned that Rajwinder Singh was a nurse and left his job under unusual circumstances before he fled the country. Can you tell us more about that?

What sort of nurse was he and when and how did he resign?

We haven't heard a lot about, I guess, his time as a nurse beyond that he, you know, he did his qualifications at JCU and Cairns, studied there for 18 months and was working at Innisfale Hospital.

And then we had a bit of evidence about what it was like to work with.

So one of his former colleagues gave evidence that he was a respected and competent nurse and that she felt that he was being bullied, he was being treated unfairly by another colleague.

And then there was evidence presented to the court about his resignation, which was essentially in what was described as a disjointed voice message left on the phone of one of his managers at Innisfal Hospital.

And this was just over a week after Toy Cordingley's death. So late October 2018, he's left this message on his manager's phone and she's actually transcribed the message.

And he kind of talks about problems with his family and that he doesn't think he's going to come back and he's wanting to arrange for his severance pay. And he's left her a Gmail address

for any forward contacts. But it's kind of a rambling message and he's kind of just saying, look,

I'm not sure I'm ever going to come back and I don't think I'm going to return to my family or Innisfail Hospital anytime soon.

Okay. Great.
Thank you, Chris. Great question, Alison, as well.
So thank you for getting in touch from the Great Ocean Road. And Chris, our last question for today's episode from Janelle.

Hi, Chris and Stocky, avid listener of the show since day one. Love it.
Do we know if anyone received the reward when the defendant was located in India?

Look, Janelle, that information hasn't been presented to the jury, so I'm not sure. We only heard that a reward was offered in early November 2022, and that gained widespread publicity in India.

And then about three weeks later, police received information that was able to lead to Rajwinder Singh's arrest at a Sikh temple in northern New Delhi. But beyond that,

we haven't heard anything more. Thank you, Chris.
Thank you, Janelle. Another great question.

If you have any questions yourself, there's something you're wondering about, if there's a little connection that hasn't quite been made in your mind, please get in touch. Theksov at abc.net.au.

I really love hearing from you. Chris, as you can tell, really loves answering your questions.
And when I can answer one, I enjoy it as well. So please get in touch, theksov at abc.net.au.

Just a little reminder as well that we are running a listener survey at the moment. So please avail yourself of the listener survey.

I have since learned I have used that that word in the in the correct context so please jump in and fill out that survey it'll be in the episode description of this episode and the other ones we've done over the last week or so

just so we can help make this pod a bit more suited to you we want to know what you like what you want to hear on the case of so if you jump in and fill that out it'll help us make this pod even more suited to to your life so i would very much appreciate it if you would do that.

It does ask you if you use the ABC Listen app, so I will know, but I would just highly encourage you to get behind the ABC Listen app is the best way to listen to the case survey episodes appear there slightly earlier than they appear anywhere else.

And there may be a little surprise coming a bit later today, this evening, overnight, maybe. So keep an eye on that.
That surprise will appear in the ABC Listen app before it appears anywhere else.

Of course, if you are using a different podcast platform, if you could leave us a rating or a view, that would be very much appreciated and would make me very happy.

It'd also make Chris Tester very happy.

He can reflect and bask on on that glow while he lets us know where we're off to over the next couple of days. We're about to get into the closing arguments from both counsel.

So first, the Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane will wrap up the case, you know.

pointing the jury to, I guess, all of the bits of evidence that the Crown will say they can infer points to Rajwinder Singh as having murdered Toy accordingly beyond all reasonable doubt.

And then once he's done, Greg Maguire, Rajwinder Singh's defence counsel, will have his opportunity to address the jury, I guess pointing to the parts of the case that he say amount to reasonable doubt and make an argument for why they should find Rajwinder Singh not guilty.

Beyond that, from there, Justice Lincoln Crowley will spend some time summing up the case, explaining to the jury,

going through different bits of evidence and talking about the legal aspects that they need to keep in mind as they're deliberating.

And then, of course, it will be over to the jury and we'll be patiently awaiting a verdict.

Very big week ahead. Chris, thank you so much for taking us through it all.
Thank you.

We're going to be back in your feed on Thursday with what is going to be quite a significant episode, closing arguments likely from both prosecution and defence at that point, probably at least some judges' remarks as well.

So make sure you get yourself around that and be back in your feed then.

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

This episode was produced on the lands of the Gimoi, Wallabara, Yedinji, Taraburul and Wurundjeri people.