WEBVTT - The murder of Michelle Buckingham 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:04.240 The Buckingham case was one of a string of other 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:08.680 cold cases that have baffled investigators, sometimes for years. Her 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.959 violent and senseless death was a macab mystery and a 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.560 stain on the Shepherdon area for more than thirty years. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:19.599 But there's always a but four men always knew the truth. 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:22.760 It would take another generation of detectives thirty years to 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:27.280 catch another unknown killer whose crime haunted the district where 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:31.160 poor Michelle Buckingham lived and died. I'm Andrew Rule his 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:34.440 life and crimes. We're going to look at an old 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.520 case that was committed Waiverack in the eighties and sat 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.400 around for close to thirty years before it was solved. 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.519 And it's a remarkable case because the betting was it 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:48.760 would never be solved. And that is the case of 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:53.360 Michelle Buckingham Shepherdon. But that reminds us of some other cases, 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:58.840 cold cases where no one has actually been brought to 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:03.360 justice and certainly no one has been convicted, and we 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.760 run through a few of those as well. That's nine 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:11.960 years ago last month since a man was sentenced to 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:14.560 twenty seven years prison for the murder of a teenage 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:19.360 girl near Sheperton back in late nineteen eighty three. In court, 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:24.160 this fellow, Stephen Bradley, was described as a dog groomer, 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:27.800 but I'm tipping that in jail that will have been 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.639 shortened to dog, and he is white. Even in jail 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.240 what he did in company with two other people is 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:40.520 regarded as a dog act. This was Stephen Bradley's tenth 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:45.080 Christmas inside and he faces another ten before having any 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.160 chance of parole. That is, if there is a god. 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.160 The girl he murdered was named Michelle Buckingham, and she 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.960 was only sixteen. She was only just out of year ten. 0:01:57.560 --> 0:02:00.680 She wasn't really old enough to leave school the standards 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:04.280 of most parents, they would want their child to stay 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:06.880 at school longer than year ten, and she did not. 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:12.320 Her violent and senseless death was a macab mystery and 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:16.600 a stain on the Shepherdon area for more than thirty years. 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:22.960 But there's always a butt. Four men always knew the 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:28.440 truth about Michelle and who'd killed her. Not just Bradley 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.320 and his two co offenders, who were both eventually named 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:35.040 in court alongside him, but the man that Bradley once 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:39.560 told a dreadful secret. That man was his brother in law, 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.960 whose conscience finally outweighed his fear when he was moved 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.200 by a photograph of the murdered girl's still grieving mother 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:52.800 in a local newspaper, the Sheperdon News, three decades after 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:57.880 her body was found. Long story short. Michelle Buckingham sixteen 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:00.760 was a sheep girl. She went to sheper and High, 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.360 but she left as soon as she could at fifteen 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.320 years old, to work in a milk bar, then a 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:11.760 department store, and finally a supermarket. She was tall, looked 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:13.680 a bit older than the year eleven school girl that 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.200 she should have been. She lived with her mother, sister, 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.960 and brother, but she'd moved out of home on Wednesday, 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:27.320 October the nineteenth to stay temporarily with a friend at 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:32.160 a local caravan park, the Stray Leaves Caravan Park, where 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.880 her father was estrange from her mother also lived. That 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:42.040 was a Wednesday. She was dead by Friday night. Her 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.120 mother had begged her not to leave home until she 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.960 was more mature, but Michelee knew better. She wanted to 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.600 move into a sharehouse and live her own life. Bunking 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.720 in at the caravan park was strictly temporary, but it 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:58.800 turned out to be fatal Because obviously, some bad people 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:03.560 knew she was there. The night after she left home missus. 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:08.040 Thursday October the twentieth, she danced with friends at a 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:11.800 rose tattoo gig at a big pub called the Golden 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:16.880 Valley Hotel, very big, famous hotel in shep particularly in 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:21.279 the past. The next day, a Friday, she was booked 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:24.039 to work from ten am to nine pm at the 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:27.960 local Coals, but she left work around six thirty pm, 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:32.080 saying she felt unwell. Now we don't really know what 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:37.239 that was, but anyway, she apparently dropped into the Victoria Hotel, 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.800 another pub, and spoke to a friend before heading off 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.160 to walk the three kilometers to the caravan park. She's 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:48.440 two years too young to drive, no carp she's left home, 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:53.400 she's walking, She's vulnerable, the friend would recall. She seemed unhappy, 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.720 not her usual bubbly self. Whether that had any bearing 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.880 on what happened next is hard to say. Witnesses would 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:04.520 later tell police they saw her near the caravan park. 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:09.279 They were probably the last to see her alive apart 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:14.400 from the men who killed her. Michelle vanished that night, 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.200 but no one knew she wasn't living with either parents, 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:20.960 so each assumed she was with the other or with 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.800 a friend. Her boss tried calling on Saturday morning from 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.400 the supermarket when she didn't arrive at work, but her 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:34.960 disappearance fell between the cracks. A week later, October twenty eighth, 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:39.920 she was formally reported missing. Her body was not found 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.720 until ten days after that, on November seventh, So you 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.320 can imagine at that time of year in central Victoria 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.640 what that meant. Her body was half hidden in long 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:55.080 grass on a gravel road at Kayala East, on the 0:05:55.240 --> 0:06:00.320 far out edge of Shepperdon's rural outskirts. She'd been stabbed 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.520 nineteen times after seventeen days of exposure to warm weather, 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:09.320 animals and insects. The body held no clue for police. 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:15.200 They stayed clueless for another twenty nine years. The homicide 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.880 squad of that era had apatchy record with killings that 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:22.240 were not simple domestics. The Buckingham case was one of 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.120 a string of other cold cases that had baffled investigators, 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:31.000 sometimes for years. In nineteen eighty three, Sheperdon still buzzed 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.279 with fears and rumors about the double murder of local 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.960 teenagers Gary Haywood and had been a medil back in 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:42.960 sixty six. Their bodies too, had been found after sixteen 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:45.800 days abandoned in a bush paddock on the Golden River 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:49.480 Flats near Murchison, which has past Kayla a lot of 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:54.159 parallels quite similar. In October nineteen seventy three, a decade 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:58.720 before Michelle Buckingham's death, a teenager called Bromwin Richardson had 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:02.960 been abducted and murdered near Aubrey. Her body was found 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:07.680 floating in the murray fairly quickly, and in January nineteen 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.080 eighty forty year old Eline Jones was killed and thrown 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:15.240 in the murray near a camping spot at Tokemall. Her 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.960 husband died of a heart attack when he found her 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:24.040 bleeding body snagged in the river the next morning. It 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:27.080 would take police nearly twenty years to arrest the killer 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:31.160 of Gary Haywood, and had been a medill, that being 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:37.680 Raymond Edmonds, the deviate the media dubbed mister Stinkey, But 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:40.520 it would take another generation of detected thirty years to 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:45.840 catch another unknown killer whose crime haunted the district where 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:51.679 poor Michelle Buckingham lived and died. At least the police 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.400 had one fingerprint to work with in the Medil Haywood puzzle. 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:59.640 They had absolutely nothing in the Buckingham case. The truth 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:03.320 is it might never have been solved if not for 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:07.920 the diligent work of a Shepherdon News reporter in two 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.920 thousand twelve. This is twenty nine years after Michele's death. 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.520 She's been written about by a young reporter who was 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:19.240 at that stage under the age of twenty nine. She 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:23.800 had not even been born when Michele Buckingham was murdered. 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.000 A five day blitz of stories and photographs, re examining 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:31.760 every aspect of the case, was designed to arouse memories 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:38.200 and maybe consciences, time changes, thinks, sometimes breaking down once 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:44.439 impenetrable relationships, and fears. Dozens of tips flowed in. One 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.319 of them intrigued the seasoned homicide detective Ron Iddles, a 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.880 name we hear quite a lot in our podcasts Iddles 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:55.240 agreed to meet a local man discreetly at the Shepherdon 0:08:55.440 --> 0:09:01.720 East football ground. The mystery man was Norman Gribble. He 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.439 had a story he had hidden for almost thirty years. 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.680 He told the detective that the day after Michelle was murdered, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:12.680 his brother in law had told him that he and 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:14.720 two others had picked her up at the caravan park 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:20.160 in his car. That's in Gribble's car. When she later 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.080 refused to have sex with the men, they stabbed her 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:26.320 to death in the car at the Pine Lodge Hotel 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:30.520 car park, about nine kilometers east of the caravan park 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:35.400 where she was picked up Gribble. This is Gribble being 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.360 the man who's telling on Idol's this terrible story. Gribble 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:44.960 said he'd even bandaged the killer's cut hand injured committing 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.520 the crime. When I say killer, one of three killers, 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.720 only one conviction. Note the man who confessed the murder, 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:57.120 of course, was Stephen Bradley, brother of Gribble's wife. He 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.560 had subsequently sold his car back in eighty three and 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.719 left Sheperdon for interstate, and he very rarely came back 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.360 to shep Gribble at first didn't want to go on 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.120 the record, but Idyle's persuaded him to make a statement. 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.080 When Eddles traced Bradley in Queensland, he was working as 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.560 a dog groomer. He changed his story several times in 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:24.360 many months, and he was not charged until May twenty fourteen. 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.400 This is relatively recently in terms of a very old 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:33.120 cold case. The two men named in court as co 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:39.760 offenders Bradley's associates, Rodney Butler and Trevor Corrigan, swore they 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:44.960 weren't involved, but Supreme Court Judge Robert Osborn rejected their 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.720 evidence outright, stating he was satisfied it was a quote 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:55.480 killing carried out jointly unquote by them with Bradley. There 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.720 was not enough formal evidence to assure convictions against Butler 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.840 and Corrigan, so they walked while their so called mate 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:08.920 started a life of fear and loathing in prison. The 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.000 court heard that most of the evidence was lost in 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.800 the early nineteen nineties when a police inspector ordered it 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:18.760 destroyed on grounds it was a quote biological hazard go figure. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.760 Only a handful of crime scene photographs were kept. That's andy. 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:27.640 It wasn't the only time that murder investigations were bungled 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:30.640 in Sheperdon. It was a bit of a black hole 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:34.880 for some motives. There was the brazen killing of Rocky Arrear, 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.520 whose body was discovered hidden in someone else's grave at 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:43.240 Pine Lodge Cemetery in early nineteen ninety eight, more than 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:48.800 six years after Rocky supposedly ran away to avoid a 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:52.520 second trial over a massive burglary of Bendigo with two 0:11:52.920 --> 0:12:00.400 hardened local identities from Shep. The other scandal in shepherd 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.920 An Area that was never really resolved was the death 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.040 of a farmer's wife called Kay King on the family 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:13.199 dairy property near Catandra, which is northeast of Shep. The 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.040 mother of four was found battered and bruised and drowned 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.520 in a shallow sump in an old pigpen. People often 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.160 say she went into a well, but this sump was 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.840 a It looked like a well on top. It was 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.360 a hole maybe a meter by a meter, but it 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:30.920 just went down a few feet or say a met 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:34.960 or too deep, and it collected the water from an 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.800 old pigpen when it rained. Three of her now adult 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:44.040 children believe she was murdered, but enough police back then 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.880 in ninety eight bought the story that she'd fallen headfirst 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:52.240 into the water. In truth, that crime scene had been 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:57.800 innocently destroyed by neighbors who rushed to help. They didn't 0:12:57.840 --> 0:12:59.800 know what they were doing, they thought they were helping. 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.880 There is still a chance that someone somewhere knows more 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.440 than they admit about the deaths of Rocky Area and 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:11.480 Kay King. The past could still catch up with their 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:17.240 killers the way it did with Stephen Bradley nine years 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:22.839 ago this summer. This case, of course, will for many 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:27.120 listeners bring up one of the most notorious cases in 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.960 Australian history, and that is the Easy Street murders of 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:34.400 nineteen seventy seven, and that happened six years before. It 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:38.720 also involved two young women from the country, but they 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.840 were living at this stage in Melbourne and Collingwood. They 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.400 were renting a house together in Easy Street, Collingwood. As 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.280 listeners will know, they were called the Two sus They 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:53.880 were Susan Bartlett and Susanne Armstrong. And Susan Bartlett was 0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:58.640 a teacher, had been teaching up at Broadford. Armstrong had 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:01.480 traveled the world and come home with a little boy 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.240 called Gregory. They were old friends from when they went 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.280 to school together at Euroa High School, which is just 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.600 across the country a short drive, would you believe, from 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.880 where Michelle Buckingham was found at Kayla, not that far across. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:21.040 The Easy Street case has always been notorious, but it 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:28.920 has become extremely topical since last September when Victoria Police 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.960 announced something that had been a very tightly held secret, 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:39.400 and that was they had been observing a particular man 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:42.880 in Greece. Now, this man is a man with a 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:47.440 dual citizenship because his parents were Greek migrants back in 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:53.600 the fifties. He had dual citizenship and probably two passports. Whatever. 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:58.359 And the story of this man, whose name is Perry Korumblas. 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.960 He's real Greek name is slightly longer, but we'll call 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.240 him Perry. Perry Krumbliss was a young man who lived 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.760 in Collingwood with his parents, a few blocks away from 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.720 Easy Straight, as did many other people. The fact he 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.200 lived nearby does not make him a natural suspect or 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.960 anything of the kind, but that's where he lived. We 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:24.360 don't want to bag. Perry was a relatively harmless young fellow, 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.520 it would appear. And it turns out that a few 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.480 days after the murders, after the bodies were found in 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:37.240 the hot summer of nineteen seventy seven, a young Collingwood 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:42.200 policeman pulled him up driving around. Now there'll be arjibaji 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.600 about why a seventeen year old was driving a car, 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.280 but anyway he was, and he was pulled over, possibly 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.960 like a lot of Mediterranean young many had a heavy 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.720 growth of whiskers and probably looked older than he was. 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.000 And the young policeman said, we'll step out of the 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:00.880 car sun and let's look in the boot. And the 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:05.320 policeman was Itel So later became a very famous homicide detective. 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:09.520 At that stage was just a big, flat foot uniform 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:11.280 copper who had come down from the bush and joined 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.360 the police force. And he did the right thing. They 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:16.720 opened the boot and he looked in there looking for 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:19.520 stolen goods or a weapon or whatever. And guess what 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:23.880 he finds. He finds a knife in a leather sheath. 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:25.880 That's a sheath knife as we used to call them, 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:30.200 or a hunting knife as often called a sharp knife. 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:33.800 Fairly knew no signs really have been sharpened or not 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.560 worn at all. And Itoles removed the knife and he 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:40.480 handed it into his superiors, and so it ended up 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:45.359 at the crime department, you would think, and with the 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.120 what was then known as the homicide squad, which was 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:53.720 a fairly understaffed squad, and they examined it and they 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.400 found that there was a little bit of blood inside 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:58.280 the sheath. It wasn't covert in blood. There was a 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:01.360 little bit of blood. Now we must be fair here 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.760 and say it's not that unusual for a sheath knife 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:07.879 to have some signs of blood, especially back in that 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.920 era in the seventies, we had in Melbourne a lot 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.200 of people who'd come from rural Greece and rural Italy 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.600 and rural Middle East, all sorts of places, and they 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.600 were keen on slaughtering their own lamb and their own goats. 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.080 It was a real thing back in the day. They 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.760 would have little paddocks around Thomastown and out the other 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.240 end of Coburg and Preston and you'd see half a 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:34.560 dozen lambs there or three goats or something, and a 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.480 lot of people would slaughter their own meat. In fact, 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.359 a lot of those people started their working life in 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:42.800 Australia at abbatars because you could get the work. It 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:44.760 was dirty, it was a little bit dangerous, and it 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:47.639 was unpleasant, but you could get the jobs and you 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.639 could often get some cheap meat. So the fact that 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.080 this young fellow had a knife with some blood on 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:56.919 it in itself doesn't indicate any sort of guilt necessarily. 0:17:57.480 --> 0:17:59.720 But the police were interested in this fellow and they 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:02.800 took him into to be questioned, and I'm told he 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:07.040 was questioned robustly, as people were in those days, and 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:09.960 Apparently he stuck to his answer, and his answer may 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:14.359 well be the truth. Let's assume for the moment that 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:16.680 it was the truth, because we don't know any better. 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.400 He said to them something that actually has a sort 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.040 of an internal logic. He said, no, no, I'd pick 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.440 this knife up. I found it on the railway line 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:31.119 underneath the footbridge that goes from the west side of 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:34.159 Punt Road over the railway line towards Victoria Park, the 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.560 football ground, and it looks to me, he must have 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:39.960 told them as if it had been dropped from the 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:45.159 railway bridge by someone perhaps fleeing the murdency, and that 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.359 he'd spied it sitting there, this nice new knife, and 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:50.520 he looked down, saw it and felt, beauty, I'll get it. Well, 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:52.960 I would have done that when I was seventeen. I'd 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:54.880 go down and walk out in the tracks and get 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:59.359 the knife. Probably don't now, And he tells them that story. 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:02.240 Now it be true, and it certainly is a story 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.280 that has a lot to commend it. It is logical, 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:11.840 and the police after a while, they obviously nineteen seventy seven, 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:17.240 early seventy seven, the police bought his story because subsequently, 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:21.679 many months later, when there was an inquest into the 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:27.520 death of the two young women. Although his name Perry Crumblus, 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.080 although his name was on a list of sort of 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:35.320 minor witnesses, he didn't actually come to court. He didn't attend. 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.760 He was a no show year on it, and we 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:43.320 won't explore that too deeply. So he didn't front for court, 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:46.879 and the police didn't seem to care much of the 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.639 council assisting the coroner, and the coroner himself did not 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.280 seem to care that this one person out of twenty 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:59.760 wasn't there. His absence was noted, but nothing, no significance 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.280 was attached to it. This is how it sat for 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:05.680 more than forty years. Easy Street was just one of 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:10.760 the great mysteries until officially, at least last September, on 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:16.479 a Saturday morning, the police announced that they'd arrested a 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.520 man in Rome Airport, and this, of course was his 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:24.080 Perry Crumblas. And it turns out that you know, Perry's 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.840 name was on a list, a long, long, long list 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.240 of people who've been spoken to back in seventy seven. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:32.480 There was a one hundred and thirty odd of them, 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:35.680 whatever one hundred and forty A lot of people more 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:37.640 than half of them are still alive. I think ninety 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:41.399 odd is still alive, and more as a duty and 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.120 a chore than anything else, the police had gone around 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.359 knocking on doors, finding people and saying, oh, sir, you 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.840 know blah blah, could you please lick this swab or whatever, 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:58.960 and getting DNA samples because the murder scene there was DNA. 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.800 There was fluids body fluids at the murder scene which 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:08.480 provided DNA samples for the police to test against. It 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.600 would appear that's what it seems like. Now we're not 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.800 going to go into what happened in the meantime. Clearly 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:20.199 Pericorumblus and one hundred plus others ninety plus others have 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.560 been spoken to, and at some point after that he 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:27.480 went to Greece. Now again, I wouldn't draw anything adverse 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.520 against that his family had returned to Greece. His parents, 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:37.760 many many Greek migrants, having achieved a certain age retirement 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:41.280 age particularly return to Greece because they can go back 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.760 to a family property that is very cheap, or buy 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:48.960 something very cheaply, often inherit it, and they can retain 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:55.160 their Australian pension. And rural Greece particularly is full of 0:21:55.560 --> 0:22:00.200 ex Australian and Canadian Greeks who's asking about how the 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.800 foot's going or how the ice hockey is and you know, 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:04.360 do your driver a hold in the home and all 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:07.280 that because they used to drive taxies in Melbourne or whatever. 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:11.000 So Greece is a place that has a big wide 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:16.040 the aspra of migrants who many of them have gone home, 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:19.480 and many of them they visit back and forth regularly. 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:21.760 If you sit on a beach in Greece long enough, 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:26.200 you'll hear Australian accents, and it is Greek's come home 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:28.720 to see grandma or auntie or whatever it might be. 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:36.440 And so, long story short, the likely prosecution case against 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:39.760 Perry Krumbler's he's probably going to raise the fact that 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:42.560 he went back to Greece. But the defense, of course 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:44.680 would raise the fact that a lot of people do. 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:47.800 Why shouldn't he He liked his dear old mum and 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:49.760 he wanted to go home so she could cook him, 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:52.800 you know, eggplant and mussaka and all that good stuff. 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:56.560 So it's going to be an intriguing case. Why do 0:22:56.640 --> 0:23:00.639 we bring this up, Well, it's just another example of 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:05.840 how after decades, the long arm of the law reached 0:23:05.880 --> 0:23:09.920 out and tapped somebody on the shoulder when they must 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:14.800 have believed or hoped that it was all long gone 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.919 and all behind them. In the case of Perry Karumblas, 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.399 we're not suggesting that there's a murder behind him, but 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.320 of course he was questioned about it back in the day, 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:29.199 so it would be an unpleasant scenario for him just 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:33.480 being questioned back in nineteen seventy seven. The difference, of course, 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:37.000 with the Bradley Michelle Buckingham case is that when the 0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:39.960 police came looking, they tapped the shoulder of the man 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:44.560 against whom they successfully ran a prosecution. That is not 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:49.280 the case with Perry Karumblas. He will get his day 0:23:49.320 --> 0:23:52.480 in court and he's going to be very ably defended 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:58.360 by one of the best criminal defense lawyers in Australia, 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:01.320 Bill doug and that is a very good thing because 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:05.080 we would hate to see an innocent man go down 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.640 call a technicality. Thanks for listening. 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:13.080 Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for 0:24:13.240 --> 0:24:18.480 True crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:23.080 features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot AU 0:24:23.560 --> 0:24:28.760 Forward slash Andrew rule. One word. For advertising inquiries, go 0:24:28.800 --> 0:24:33.679 to news Podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:39.360 That is all one word news podcasts sold And if 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:43.960 you want further information about this episode, links are in 0:24:44.119 --> 0:25:02.120 the description. Can You Go Under