Toyah's Murder: The verdict

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After just over a day of deliberation, the jury deciding whether or not Rajwinder Singh is guilty of the murder of Toya Cordingley has returned their verdict. I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome to the case of Toya's murder. The body of Toya Cordingley 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 trial of Rajwinda Singh for the 2018 murder of Toya Cordingley took four weeks, with jurors hearing evidence from dozens of witnesses.

They have taken the time to consider whether Ajwinder Singh is guilty or not guilty of Toy Cordenly's murder and they have returned a verdict.

ABC finals reporter Chris Tester has been waiting patiently for this moment. Chris, thank you for joining us.
Hey Stocky. Chris, so much to discuss.

I mean one thing that we'll get to is a secret we have been keeping for this whole trial.

But I mean first though the moment that a jury kind of notifies people that they have a verdict is an incredibly tense moment in a trial.

There is no feeling that describes what it is like waiting for a jury to come back.

How did you find out that the jury had reached a verdict?

Yeah, look, you have to factor in that this comes after hours of waiting and you're waiting outside the courtroom itself, so kind of in the hallways of the court and there's not a lot there except, you know, some chairs, a few places to sit down.

For us as journalists, there's a bit of work you can get done, but for the family and friends of Toy Cordingley, and there have been a lot who've been turning up to court every single day of this trial.

It's just tense moments where you, I guess, don't know what, you know, how long you're going to be waiting for. So any movement is kind of, you know, catches your eye.

And in this case, you know, there was a little bit of movement,

the sound of a courtroom door unlocking, and everyone's kind of pops their head up to see what's going on. And in this case, there was a bit of movement.

And then actually, one of my journalist colleagues heard from another network heard that someone they know had got wind via the,

court's office in Brisbane that a verdict was in. And from there,

it all became a bit of a rush. Everyone's getting ready, standing up, waiting for the courtroom doors to unlock.

It took a bit of a wait, actually, probably 15 or 20 minutes or so, of just anxiety and tension before everyone, all the media, but also the family and friends of Toy accordingly, and all the police who've been turning out for this trial too could actually take a seat and find out what had happened.

How does this unfold in Queensland, in this Cairns courtroom that you've been in for the last four weeks watching this trial?

What's the process for getting the jury in and for them delivering their verdict?

Once court's back underway and the judge is at the bench, Justice Lincoln Crowley is told the jury has a verdict and

the bailiff will go and knock on the door of the jury room, which is kind of at the back of the courtroom.

And they're all let in. And normally for the trial, they're let into each of their seats.

They're juror number one to 12 and they've got the same seat that they would have sat in each day for the past four weeks.

But in the case of delivering the verdict, they don't sit down, they all line up in a row in front of the jury box, and they face the judge.

You know, the question is put to them: Have you all reached your verdict? It's made sure that it's unanimous.

There's a speaker who's answering the questions, and then the charge is put to the jury, and they're asked to deliver that verdict.

What did they deliver?

They've said that unanimously they've agreed that Rajwinder Singh is guilty of the murder of Toy Cordingley.

Was there any reaction in the courtroom?

It was immediate.

These are matters of milliseconds. I'm not actually sure they'd finished delivering the verdict, but, you know, immediately just gasps from the public gallery.

Some cried, there were tears, there was just

audible shock.

Where the media benches are, it's kind of on the side of the courtroom that Troy Cordingley and his partner have been sitting on.

And so I was kind of looking at them and I guess trying to keep an eye on what their reaction was, as well as looking at Rajwinder Singh in the dock and what his reaction was.

And, you know, there was that initial gasp and kind of

almost like a cry. And then I could hear Troy and see him saying, rotten hell, you bastard.

to which the Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane kind of turned around and gestured to the gallery to kind of keep a lid on things. But it was just palpable.

There was an absolute outpouring of emotion in that courtroom. It's a cliche we kind of try and tend to steer clear from in news writing and news copy, but it was absolutely appropriate here.

It was just,

it was an outpouring of emotion, of grief, and I guess one of finality, because this has come at the end of not just a four-week trial, but for all of her family and friends who've been waiting, it's seven years of waiting for an outcome and waiting for justice.

Yeah, yeah, and Troy Cordingley, Toya Cordingley's dad, has been there that whole time, gave evidence really early in the trial, you know, had to retell the story of finding his daughter's body, you know, buried under sand on Wongetty Beach.

And so, yeah, it would be an incredible, incredibly emotional moment for him and the rest of Toya Cordingley's family as well and their supporters.

Chris, any reaction from Rajwinder Singh as the verdict was read out?

No, look,

he appeared quite calm as he was waiting for the jury to be let in.

I noticed that before that he was brought into the courtroom just before proceedings began, and I noticed he was kind of looking up at the ceiling and as they were brought in he kind of looked straightforward.

Once the verdict is read out and that process has taken place the judge then addresses him and his team and says is there any reason why sentencing should not be passed upon you and that's kind of the moment at which the case moves into its next phase and no look he was very solemn.

He hasn't given much away during this entire four weeks

over this time. You know he's heard evidence given in court from his estranged wife, Sukdeep Kaur, from his sister Palwindakaur, his parents, Amar Singh and Balwindaka.

You know, we've heard about how he left his family suddenly in 2018 and didn't speak to many of them again.

He hasn't heard from his three children, who were all quite young at the time he left, and he hasn't given much away during that entire time.

And it was similarly today a very muted kind of reaction for a man found guilty of a charge which in Queensland carries a mandatory sentence of life life imprisonment.

Yeah, do we have any idea of the sentence that he will face at the moment? I mean,

does mandatory mean what I think it means in the sense that he will be imprisoned for life, or is there some fiddling around the edges here or some sentencing considerations that could see that commuted slightly or a little lower?

Yeah, it's a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment, but of course the non-parole period, which is the amount of time that he must serve of that sentence before he can apply for parole, is always a matter for submissions from counsel.

The court's yet to take those. So

the Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane will be putting forward, I guess, what the Crown says are matters that the court should take into account when determining ultimately what the minimum amount of time that Rajwinda Singh should spend behind bars is.

And again, the defense will put forward

any circumstances that they say are mitigating factors.

And of course, that will be really interesting as well, because during this entire trial, the only version of events we've heard from Winder Singh is that evidence of the covert recording in the Cairns watch house where he claimed to have witnessed two killers stab toy accordingly and that he ran in fear for his life and fled to India.

In finding him guilty, the juries essentially rejected his version of events because part of the

Justice Lincoln Crowley's final directions to the jury was if you're even uncertain as to whether he was telling the truth, whether that may have been a possibility, you need to find him not guilty because it amounts to reasonable doubt.

So in finding Rajwinder Singh guilty, they've essentially found that he wasn't telling the truth and they've rejected his version.

So the sentencing submissions really will be the final part in this process where Rajwinder Singh and his lawyers have that option to offer a different version or explain what they say actually happened that afternoon on the beach.

Yeah, we're going to bring you an episode tomorrow morning.

We'll record with Chris as soon as those sentencing submissions finish and we'll bring you that episode tomorrow morning so you can get an idea of what was presented presented in those sentencing submissions, the reason for Rajwinder Singh to face a harsher sentence from the prosecution and a lighter sentence from the defence.

I mean, Chris, you've mentioned Rajwinder Singh leaving the country. This is something the prosecution opened their closing with.

Nathan Crane sort of saying at the beginning, this is a man who's left his

family and hasn't contacted them for four years.

What were some of the other key things the prosecution put forward and relied on in their case against Rajwinder Singh? Yeah, it was really that combination combination of circumstances.

Remember, not just the flight, but also the fact is DNA, a high likelihood of that DNA was found at the stick where Toy Cordingly was buried.

That likelihood of 3.7 billion that it was, that he contributed that DNA sample rather than somebody else.

Combined with the fact that the movements of his Blue Alpha Omeo appeared to match those of Toy Cordingley's phone, those three pings, the phone's final three connections with any phone towers that were registered in what appeared to be a journey away from the beach just really happened to line up with the movements of Rajwinder Singh's blue Alfaromeo.

Those points combined with the flight, but not just the fact that he left the country, but the nature of it, the way that he gave different explanations to so many people.

He told his wife he was going out and would be back in a couple of days.

He told the mate who drove him to the airport that he was going to Sydney to visit his sister and was planning to stay there for a few days.

Told his sister he was going to India. Told told the travel agent that he needed a flight urgently because his grandfather was sick.

And then on the evidence, none of these people heard from him again for more than four years until he was arrested in New Delhi after a reward was offered for information leading to his whereabouts.

So the prosecution really relied on the combination of these circumstances to say he was there, he was at the beach, only the killer had the opportunity to take the phone.

They pointed to his kind of meandering journey back to Innisfale that evening where he didn't appear to take the most direct route or certainly didn't get back to Innisfale at what would be considered a normal travel time.

Instead, he appeared to be making these stops and they happened to be near bodies of water. The prosecution put that to the jury that

he had opportunities to dispose of Toye's things or things that he'd taken from the beach.

Yeah, and the defence, you know, we heard through the trial,

particularly in their closing statements, kind of pointing to a few kind of key things that they were kind of highlighting, I guess, to plant doubt in the mind of the jury.

And these were things like, where did he get a knife from? What about some of the other people that were around that beach that day?

And, you know, questioning whether or not the jury could really trust the science of the DNA testing and also of the kind of the phone tracking that had pinned Toyota Cordini's phone to Raj Winter Singh's car.

And I mean, Chris, that obviously hasn't been enough to put doubt inside the jury's mind.

No, so they've returned their verdict after about seven hours of deliberations in court time.

They began on Friday afternoon, just after three o'clock, and continued to sit till 4.30 on Friday, and then they had the weekend off, and we reconvened this morning.

In that time, there weren't any jury notes. The jury can ask questions during deliberations.
They can get pieces of evidence clarified.

These are all done through notes that are handed via the bailiff to the judge, and everyone gets reconvened in the courtroom.

And sometimes there's legal argument about how that question should be answered. None of that happened.
It was pretty solid deliberations.

The jurors left today, as in left the building, for some very, very brief smokeo breaks, probably about 10, 15 minutes each. They had their lunch brought in with them.

Look, the defence, its arguments really centered on the possibilities that these other people

could have committed this murder. You know, Greg Maguire, the defense barrister, said, you know, they've got the wrong bloke.

He pointed to these things that he said the Crown was relying on that just didn't make sense.

And we heard some names. Some of these people gave evidence.

Marco Hardenreich, the boyfriend of Toy accordingly, Evan McRae was a tradesman who had kind of what the court heard was a history of violence. Remy Fry was a schoolteacher visiting his mum that day.

They all came to court and gave evidence about where they were on that day. And the Crown answered this by saying, We've gotten their phone records.

We've looked at CCTV footage to know where these people were driving on that day, and they just weren't there.

And then the defense brought in another fellow called Joshua James Richards, who

actually murdered a man on the 17th of October, so four days before Toy accordingly was killed, murdered a friend near Mossman with a bow and arrow. It was a guy he knew.

He killed him over a property dispute. The court heard he later went back and actually

somehow turfed that guy's car off a cliff near the Gelatin Range, which is not too far away from Port Douglas. And he was arrested on the 24th of October.

And he was kind of a wild card that the defense brought in. He wasn't called as a witness or anything.

He was eventually convicted of that murder and the defence said, well look, did the police know where this guy was every day?

What about all these people who we've heard carry knives and go pig hunting near Wongeti Beach?

So they were kind of casting a wide net and ultimately the jury has come back and found Raj Windersen guilty, which means they've considered all these options and decided ultimately that they

they don't believe these people killed Toy accordingly because they've made a decision that they have no reasonable doubt. Yep.
Yeah, they have.

Chris, as well as the proceedings inside the courtroom today, what we often see at the end of something like this is

statements from families, the police outside of court as well.

It's a huge moment for the family of Toy Accordingly, as you've been saying, it's been such a long road for them as well.

This is a murder that happened in 2018, and here we are in 2025 with them hopefully getting some closure around that.

What do we hear outside court?

We've heard brief statements from them. And as I said earlier, Toy Cordingly's mum, Vanessa Gardner, and her dad, Troy Cordingley, they each come to court every day of this trial.

Vanessa's supported by her partner and Troy by his. And they sit there through almost all the evidence.

They've only left the courtroom for the particularly gruesome images and I guess graphic descriptions of the injuries that their daughter suffered. And this has been a seven-year journey for them.

And they have at times had to front front cameras over the years, appealing for information to help publicise, for example, that reward.

But they're not people who seek the limelight. And I think they would much rather be well out of the spotlight and left alone.

So I think it was a big thing for them to have to front cameras today and make statements to the media. We heard first from

Vanessa Gardner, Toya's mum, and she spoke a little bit about the the daughter that she's lost and the fact that it's not a day of joy for them, but really one of closure after such a long journey in getting justice.

Today is a very long, awaited day for us as a family. Almost six and a half years now since Toya was taken from us in the worst of circumstances.

It's not so much a great day or a day to celebrate for us. Today is a big piece of this journey that needed an ending and most of all, justice for our Toya.

For us as a family, we will never forget this lovable, innocent, full-of-life young woman. And we will always wonder what could have been if her life was not cut so short.

As far as the person who committed this murder and inflicted a horrible death on our daughter, it will never be forgiven by us.

I would like to say there are multiple victims in this, Marco for one, and then this man's wife, Sukdeep Kerr, for whom we hold no malice towards, as her and her children are merely more collateral damage from this man's actions.

To finish, my husband, Snake, and our two kids, Jack and Lena, and myself, take this opportunity to finally say a massive thank you to everyone in the community far and wide and overseas involved, no matter how big or small your actions or contributions.

We sincerely thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.

Never forget your great support. So thank you from us and mostly importantly, Toya.

That's Vanessa Gardner, Toya Cordingley's mum, standing outside the Cairns Supreme Court talking to the media following Raj Windersing's Singh's murder conviction.

And I mean, Chris, interesting to hear Vanessa kind of referencing the other victims, you know, not just Marker Hardenreich, but also Suktib Kaur, Rajwinder Singh's wife.

Yeah, she's described them there as almost collateral damage from what this man has done, Sukteep Kaur and her three children.

So extraordinary statement from Vanessa Gardner, you know, about someone who she didn't want to name.

She didn't use Rajwinder Singh's name in that statement, quite pointedly, but an extraordinary insight into how the family of Toy Accordingly are feeling about some of these names and people that we've heard come up during this trial.

Yeah, and we also heard from Troy Cordingley, Toy Accordingly's dad outside the courthouse as well.

Today's verdict has delivered a form of justice, but for us there can never be true justice as we now live in a world without Toya and the world is a poorer place for it.

The Toya will always be alive in our hearts and in the hearts of a great many others.

That's Troy Cordingley, Toya Cording Lee's father and Chris as well as Toya's parents, the police, have spoken as well.

What did we hear from them? That's right. We heard from Inspector Sonia Smith who has been, I guess, one of the public faces of this investigation for seven years.

You know, she did a lot of media at the time when there really weren't many leads and again when they were trying to bring Rajwinder Singh back from India, she was actually surrounded as she gave her statement to the press by some of the detectives that we've heard evidence from in this trial.

You know, Detective Matt Maddock, who was the one leading that team that spent all that time poring over the CCTV and traffic camera footage, that really painstaking task.

That dragnet that led to them identifying Rajwinder Singh's blue Alfa Romeo and Zoe Goodall, who's been there for the extradition and supporting family as well.

Detective Sergeant Gary Hall, you know, these cops had tears in their eyes as Sonia Smith was reading reading out this statement.

And she really spoke about not just how much it's affected the community more broadly of Far North Queensland, but just the volume of work and the scale of this murder investigation and I guess its significance, not just for the community of Far North Queensland, but to Toya's family and loved ones as well.

I'd like to acknowledge the work of everyone involved in this investigation, including the team of highly capable and dedicated detectives who stand behind me, who have been relentless in their pursuit of justice for Toya and her family.

Over the last seven years, this team has worked tirelessly and remained committed to this extensive investigation, the international extradition, and the judicial process.

Most importantly, I would like to acknowledge Toya's family and friends, particularly her mum, Vanessa, and her dad, Troy.

Words cannot articulate the pain and hurt they have endured over the last seven years.

That's Inspector Sonia Smith from the Queensland Police Service speaking outside the Cairns Supreme Court following the conviction of Rajwinda Singh for the 2018 murder of Toya Cordingley on Wongetty Beach, just north of Cairns.

If you have any questions about anything related to this case, feel free to get in touch with the caselove at abc.net.au.

We really do enjoy hearing from you and we'll be knocking out an episode tomorrow morning as well where we talk about what we hear through the sentencing submissions that are being made through Wednesday.

And so we'll have room to answer some of those questions that we haven't been able to get to during the trial.

And I mean, there's been some quite significant news that we have kept from you for this whole trial.

We're going to be discussing this in much greater detail in an episode that will be coming very, very shortly. But Chris, this was in fact a retrial.

Rajwinder Singh was tried for the murder of Toy Accordingly earlier this year. What happened there? That's right.

That trial wrapped up in mid-March and actually ended in a hung jury after a couple of days of deliberations following a trial of rather similar length.

So that first jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and from there a retrial was scheduled.

Yeah, I mean, we haven't been able to talk about that because it hasn't been mentioned to the jury in this trial.

I mean, we've hinted at it at a couple of points when it has come up in this trial and the jury's kind of been, you know, heard references to another trial, but we couldn't give you, you you know the detail that it was in fact a hung jury that a jury couldn't reach a verdict in that trial in march and i mean chris you were sitting through that trial uh earlier in the year um and there were some you know some kind of noticeable differences in the in the way they were run right

Yeah, look, I think broadly speaking, the evidence was the same.

I think the Crown has brought a bit more detail to the second trial to cover off perhaps some areas that the defence were questioning during the first trial.

We did hear a little bit of evidence during this trial about some work that had been done mainly by investigators since March to cover off on a couple of points.

And the defence tactic maybe changed slightly, which we can get into a little later.

But broadly speaking, the crux was the same and the Crown was really relying on the same circumstantial facts in the second trial as they did in the first.

Yeah, and Chris and I will be unpacking the two trials, basically comparing the two trials in an episode very, very soon.

So make sure you grab yourself the ABC Listen app so you're in the best spot to grab that. It'll appear there slightly before it appears anywhere else.
So you'll be front of the queue.

And I mean, I don't like to be in the business of keeping secrets, but we've also been keeping another one. Chris, midway through this trial, a juror was discharged as well.

That's right. It was probably a little bit past halfway during the trial.

By this point, my count was that 62 witnesses had given evidence and we all filed into the court for the usual 10 o'clock start in the morning and proceedings weren't getting underway and we a jury note was provided to the judge via the bailiff and then shared to both the crown prosecutor and mr singh's counsel uh essentially it was written by one juror about another juror saying that um that particular juror had been declaring i guess in conversation with jurors that he he'd heard all he needed to and that his mind was made up and the note alleged that this juror the subject of the note, was

not open to or biased against any evidence from the police force. And it went on to talk about, I guess, kind of

disrespectful ways that he'd spoken to other jurors and talking about how he had a history of violence himself and in his family.

Quite an extraordinary note. And the court took some time that morning, both counsel and the judge, making submissions on what to actually do about this problem.

I guess the inference was that the juror in question

was prejudiced against the Crown case. And after some time, it was decided that the juror who the note was about would be discharged, who was actually at the time the speaker of the jury.

So he was sent home. He was actually brought out into the courtroom before Justice Lincoln Crowley on his own without the other jurors all still in the jury room.

And Justice Crowley explained to him, look, I've received this note. This is what it says.
And I'm going to discharge you. And he said, yep, thanks.
And left the room.

Yeah, I mean, it was a pretty dramatic day, Chris. And I mean, at that point, questions of whether or not the trial would even continue.

So we'll unpack that and even more in the episodes we've got coming up over the next week or so. So make sure, yeah, you grab yourself the ABC, the snap.
So you're at the front of the queue for that.

And Chris, thank you so much for being in the room for all this and for bringing this to us basically as it unfolds. And yeah, you're back in today for sentencing submissions?

That's right, we will be. Thank Thank you.
We'll be back in your feed tomorrow.

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, and our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson. This episode was produced on the lands of the Gimoi, Wallabara, Yedinji, Turibul, and Wurundjuri people.