Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven Am.
Speaker 1: If you ask someone from Melbourne, they'll almost certainly tell
Speaker 1: you they've heard of the nineteen seventy seven Easy Street murders.
Speaker 1: In one of Victoria's most brutal unsolved killings, two women
Speaker 1: in their twenties were stabbed dozens of times late at
Speaker 1: night in their home on Easy Street in Collingwood. Now,
Speaker 1: after forty seven years and one hundred and thirty persons
Speaker 1: of interest, police have finally made an arrest. Today journalist
Speaker 1: and author of Murder on Easy Street Helen Thomas on
Speaker 1: the killings that haunted Melbourne and the suspect known as
Speaker 1: the Boy with the Knife that police missed. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: September twenty four. So hi, Helen, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me on seven Am. It's great to speak
Speaker 1: with you. Nice of you to invite me, Ruby, Thank
Speaker 1: you so Helen. Over the weekend there was this huge
Speaker 1: development in the Easy Street murders. You have followed this
Speaker 1: case for decades, So what was your first thought when
Speaker 1: you heard about this arrest?
Speaker 2: Ruby?
Speaker 3: I think, like everyone, I was astonished on Saturday morning
Speaker 3: when that news came through. I think it's the news
Speaker 3: everyone wanted to hear for such a long time, But
Speaker 3: it had been such a long time it seemed unbelievable initially.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the two women who were killed
Speaker 1: forty seven years ago. Now, the two sues, as they
Speaker 1: were known, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett. What do we
Speaker 1: know about their life in Easy Street?
Speaker 3: Well before Easy Street, they had grown up together in
Speaker 3: Country Victoria, in a town called Bonella. They'd gone to
Speaker 3: school together, and they'd remained friends into their late teenage
Speaker 3: and early twenties, and so, in fact, not long before
Speaker 3: they moved into the house to share in Easy Street
Speaker 3: in Collingwood, they traveled internationally together. They'd gone to Greece
Speaker 3: in fact, and had spent several weeks zooming round and
Speaker 3: then eventually ended back in Melbourne obviously, and Susan was
Speaker 3: teaching at a school nearby. She was an arts and
Speaker 3: craft teacher, and Suzanne was sort of druggling casual work
Speaker 3: as she looked after her son. And they moved into
Speaker 3: Easy Street just a couple of months before this terrible
Speaker 3: double homicide occurred.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me what we know happened to the
Speaker 1: two women. To Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett.
Speaker 3: The murder allegedly took place on the night of January
Speaker 3: the tenth, or earlier the following morning, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: until the Thursday, two days later, three nights had gone
Speaker 3: past when they were finally found or their bodies were found,
Speaker 3: and of course Susanne Armstrong wrong sixteen month old toddler
Speaker 3: was also in the house, unharmed, but alone for that
Speaker 3: length of time in his cot in the middle room.
Speaker 3: The young women's bodies were found finally by one of
Speaker 3: the women who lived next door who sort of shared
Speaker 3: the fence, and she and her housemate began to get
Speaker 3: a little bit worried because they could hear Susanne's son crime,
Speaker 3: which was really unusual, particularly through Wednesday night. They became
Speaker 3: alarmed and alone of Stevens, who was the neighbor who
Speaker 3: found the bodies, basically climbed her fence and went in
Speaker 3: the back door and walked into a terrible scene. You know,
Speaker 3: Susan lying in the hallway and Suzanne in the front bedroom.
Speaker 3: So she called out and said call the police. You know,
Speaker 3: the girls are dead, And one of the first two
Speaker 3: detectives to walk through the door is long retired as
Speaker 3: a detective, Peter Hiscock. He still says that hardly a
Speaker 3: day goes by that he doesn't think of the to
Speaker 3: young women and that scene because it was so awful
Speaker 3: and the violence had been so bad.
Speaker 4: Still to this day now we're talking about it. Now,
Speaker 4: I can see it just like a video in my mind.
Speaker 3: It's on record that both women collectively have been stabbed
Speaker 3: more than eighty times.
Speaker 4: This was something quite unique. No forced entry to girls
Speaker 4: brutally murdered. Now, in those days you wouldn't see too
Speaker 4: many and I don't recall those days too many brutal
Speaker 4: murders like these too. I mean, with time the internet,
Speaker 4: we'd see lots and lots of these things. But back
Speaker 4: in those days, back in nineteen seventy seven in Victoria
Speaker 4: in Collingwood, that was one massive double murder.
Speaker 1: So how did police respond to tell me about their investigation?
Speaker 3: Well, as you can imagine, it was a huge story
Speaker 3: in Melbourne, and what police did at the time was
Speaker 3: they walked the blocks up and down Easy Street. Obviously,
Speaker 3: they walked around, they tried to collect as much evidence
Speaker 3: as they could, and they obviously quickly tried to I guess,
Speaker 3: locate as many people as they could who knew the women,
Speaker 3: who might be able to give them an idea of
Speaker 3: who might have visited on the day or on the night,
Speaker 3: And from that point, I think it's fair to say
Speaker 3: that in the early stages they thought they would be
Speaker 3: able to solve it quite quickly because they're seeing to
Speaker 3: them to be so much evidence on the scene, because
Speaker 3: there was so much blood and in those days, let's remember,
Speaker 3: they were working with blood samples or blood analysis and fingerprinting.
Speaker 3: But as time went on, it became apparent that it
Speaker 3: was not going to be a case that was going
Speaker 3: to be sold quickly.
Speaker 1: So why was that? Why was it that, despite this
Speaker 1: kind of initial sense that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence at this crime scene and that should be straightforward
Speaker 1: to find out what had happened, that that nothing did happen.
Speaker 3: They focused, and understandably at the time, focused on two suspects. Initially,
Speaker 3: one was a young man who'd been out, had taken
Speaker 3: Suzanne out a couple of times, and it left her
Speaker 3: a note in the house the night before the bodies
Speaker 3: were found asking for her to call him.
Speaker 2: And there was still no answer. So I went down
Speaker 2: the side, and the gate was halfway open and the
Speaker 2: door was halfway open, and there was a light on,
Speaker 2: and your brother I got a note and for her
Speaker 2: to ring me. And then you know, if I had
Speaker 2: walked in a little bit further, well, I would have
Speaker 2: spot on you another couple of yards.
Speaker 3: And then the other main person of interest very quickly
Speaker 3: became a young crime reporter who had been actually staying
Speaker 3: next door. He worked for Truth, and those were the
Speaker 3: two people initially that they focused on. They had an
Speaker 3: original suspect list of eight, and over time, as you know,
Speaker 3: the years and the decades went on, it wasn't until DNA,
Speaker 3: as a forensic tool came into play that he was
Speaker 3: eventually cleared, as were the other seven suspects on that
Speaker 3: original list, and they basically had to start again, and
Speaker 3: so decades passed until finally in twenty seventeen, which marks
Speaker 3: the fortieth anniversary, if we want to use that term,
Speaker 3: of the case of the murders comes up and the
Speaker 3: police announced a million dollar award, which is something that
Speaker 3: the Armstrong family particularly had been arguing for. They always
Speaker 3: felt that there never had been a big enough reward
Speaker 3: offered to get new information, and so once that happened.
Speaker 3: There was, you know, the cases back in the public
Speaker 3: eye again. That's when they go back into the files
Speaker 3: and checked on the I think there were just over
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty people in the file that they
Speaker 3: went back and said, Okay, we better sit down and
Speaker 3: really go through this file and see who we should
Speaker 3: be talking to.
Speaker 1: After the break the evidence police missed, including the boy
Speaker 1: with the knife. Helen, you've written a book about the
Speaker 1: murders of Susanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett murder on Easy Street.
Speaker 1: Could you tell me a bit more about your involvement
Speaker 1: and your interest in the case. Well, I started.
Speaker 3: Work on the book not long after the reward had
Speaker 3: been announced in twenty seventeen, but initially I started looking
Speaker 3: at the case back in two thousand and five. So
Speaker 3: I contacted the detective at the time who had the fire.
Speaker 3: He was very keen to talk, and literally about half
Speaker 3: an hour before I was literally walking out the door
Speaker 3: to go and see him because the interview had been
Speaker 3: a proved. He rang and was very apologetic but said
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry that approval has been withdrawn. It always
Speaker 3: struck me as old Ruby. The one minute there was
Speaker 3: commission next minute there wasn't. So when the reward was announced,
Speaker 3: I thought, well, you know what, I might give this
Speaker 3: another go and have another look at this case. And
Speaker 3: again the police weren't keen to talk. But that's when
Speaker 3: I thought, I found it talk to me. I better
Speaker 3: start knocking on a few doors. And that's when I
Speaker 3: did start literally walking up and down Easy Street, hoping
Speaker 3: that there might be people who were still in that
Speaker 3: street and around in the area who remembered the time,
Speaker 3: and there were.
Speaker 1: What did you find out when you knocked on doors
Speaker 1: and started talking to people on Easy Street?
Speaker 3: I think the thing that was interesting was the fact
Speaker 3: that as much as the police had done that canvassing initially,
Speaker 3: as much as it taken so much information and evidence
Speaker 3: from the house, what I did find was that a
Speaker 3: number of people had han't been spoken to, perhaps most
Speaker 3: importantly a woman who lived next door. I mean, there
Speaker 3: was a little dunny lane that separated her house and
Speaker 3: where the two suits were living, and she maintained that
Speaker 3: she had seen someone in the house the night the
Speaker 3: girls were killed, and yet the police didn't take that statement.
Speaker 3: We've finally found that they did take her statement, but
Speaker 3: only after truth newspaper had interviewed her sort of a
Speaker 3: year on from the murder, so she was a really
Speaker 3: important witness that for whatever a series of reasons, hadn't
Speaker 3: given her account straight away. By the time I heard
Speaker 3: this story, she had died, but I met one of
Speaker 3: her neighbors who she had said she'd seen a man
Speaker 3: walking out of the back gate where the two young
Speaker 3: women had been living, and he walked towards Easy Street
Speaker 3: and he had a knife in his hand. That's what
Speaker 3: she told the neighbor who's still living in the street now.
Speaker 3: And to Truth newspaper she said she got up and
Speaker 3: looked through at about two am in the morning and
Speaker 3: looked through her landrum window and saw a man sitting
Speaker 3: in the room opposite and having drinks with Susan Bartlett.
Speaker 1: And Helen. We're now at a point where a man,
Speaker 1: a sixty five year old man, has been arrested in
Speaker 1: Italy over the murders. So what did police discover that
Speaker 1: led to this arrest after forty seven years, Well, Ruby,
Speaker 1: it seems.
Speaker 3: That you know, in reopening the case or reinvestigating the case,
Speaker 3: they came across the name of a young well a
Speaker 3: teenager at the time. Seventeen. I believe who was pulled over.
Speaker 3: His car was searched, this is again what's been alleged,
Speaker 3: and a knife was found. It had dried blood on
Speaker 3: the handle. It was handed to detectives and that's basically
Speaker 3: the end of the story up until now.
Speaker 5: A sixty five year old Australian Greek national was arrested
Speaker 5: in Rome around nine pm on Thursday evening. He was
Speaker 5: arrested on an Interpol red notice and that was because
Speaker 5: we had warrants out for his arrest for two charges
Speaker 5: of murder and one charge of rape.
Speaker 3: He remained the suspect now as they describe him, was
Speaker 3: never seen as a suspect then. He was just one
Speaker 3: of many people that was pulled over and spoken to
Speaker 3: by police within the week after the murders. He was
Speaker 3: contacted again by police in twenty seventeen. He agreed to
Speaker 3: undergo a DNA test, but failed to attend a meeting
Speaker 3: to provide a sample. Now, according to one of John
Speaker 3: Silvester's pieces over the last few days, the man of
Speaker 3: Greek descent flew to Athens about seven years ago and
Speaker 3: refused to return, despite saying he was going for a
Speaker 3: short holiday. A DNA sample taken from a close relative
Speaker 3: has match to a seaman sample found under the body
Speaker 3: of Susan Anstrong.
Speaker 5: He wasn't able to be arrested in Greece. There is
Speaker 5: a twenty years I understand statute bar on initiation of
Speaker 5: murder charges. These our warrant wasn't issued within that twenty
Speaker 5: year period, and so it was a matter of waiting,
Speaker 5: if you like, until he was outside of Greece.
Speaker 3: And the sixty five year old suspect who still in
Speaker 3: Italy has been identified as Perry Crumblus and he was
Speaker 3: actually a student at Collingwood High where Susan Bartler taught
Speaker 3: nearly half a century ago.
Speaker 1: And you've been speaking with the families, I believe for
Speaker 1: the women since the arrest, what have they said?
Speaker 3: Look, I think they are just so in a way
Speaker 3: relieved that this development has occurred. I think they are
Speaker 3: incredibly grateful that the police never gave up. They never
Speaker 3: gave up, and the police never gave up, and so
Speaker 3: that gave them the hope to keep maintaining the sort
Speaker 3: of well in his hope, isn't it. They've endured that
Speaker 3: length of time hoping that something like this could happen,
Speaker 3: and it has happened. But you know, at the same time,
Speaker 3: someone said to me the other day, are they you know,
Speaker 3: are they excited? Are they happy?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I don't think that's how I describe their response. I
Speaker 3: think they're incredibly grateful and they're relieved. And as I mentioned,
Speaker 3: Peter Hiscock, one of the first two detectives on the
Speaker 3: scene in easy history, he believed that this case wouldn't
Speaker 3: be solved in his lifetime. As much as he remembers it,
Speaker 3: as much as he can't forget what he found when
Speaker 3: he walked into that little house, he just thought too
Speaker 3: much time had gone by. It's almost impossible to believe
Speaker 3: that we've got to this point, but we.
Speaker 1: Have just finally. Helen, having looked at this case for
Speaker 1: so long, and having spoken to neighbors and people that
Speaker 1: near where these murders took place, how much do you
Speaker 1: think that this case changed Melbourne?
Speaker 3: I think the impact these murders had on the city
Speaker 3: had to do with the fact that here were two vibrant,
Speaker 3: intelligent young women vaguely stad in their own home where
Speaker 3: we're all supposed to be saved. It was something unimaginable
Speaker 3: and it happened at a time when really not everyone
Speaker 3: locked their door, not everyone had bars on their windows.
Speaker 3: It was just a different era. It was just a
Speaker 3: different moment in Melbourne and in Australia at the time.
Speaker 3: If we go back just eighteen months, another young woman
Speaker 3: disappeared but has since been declared to be a homicide victim,
Speaker 3: Julie Garcis Salay, disappeared from North Melbourne. From that point on,
Speaker 3: for the next ten years, something like twenty women, including
Speaker 3: Susan Bartlett and Susanne Armstrong were murdered in Melbourne and
Speaker 3: those cases haven't been sold until this weekend. No arrests
Speaker 3: have been made in those matters. It just seems that
Speaker 3: was an incredibly violent decade for women in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Helen, thank you so much for your time. Yes.
Speaker 3: Thanks Ruby.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, the Australian Competition and Consumer
Speaker 1: Commission has launched legal action against Coals and Toolworths, alleging
Speaker 1: the supermarket giants breached consumer law by increasing the prices
Speaker 1: of hundreds of items by at least fifteen percent before
Speaker 1: later selling them at regular prices labeled as discounted. In
Speaker 1: separate statements, Wilworth says we'll carefully review the claims and
Speaker 1: engage with the AGE that we'll see on the matter.
Speaker 1: Cole says it will defend the proceedings, blaming inflation for
Speaker 1: the price changes, and the Australian government has announced it
Speaker 1: will provide an additional ten million dollars in response to
Speaker 1: the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It says funding will
Speaker 1: be directed to UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund
Speaker 1: to provide life saving assistants, including nutrition, support and hygiene
Speaker 1: for women and girls. Since October seven, Australia has committed
Speaker 1: eighty two point five million dollars in humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.