Speaker 1: On a nondescript summer morning nearly five decades ago, Detective PETERH.
Speaker 1: Hiscock was one of the first to be confronted by
Speaker 1: an especially distressing crime scene. It was Thursday, January thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and the bodies of two young women
Speaker 1: lay on the floor of their small workers cottage in
Speaker 1: Easy Street, Collingwood. They'd been dead for two days and
Speaker 1: three long nights.
Speaker 2: It would be absolutely fair to say that I'm seventy
Speaker 2: five now, hardly a day goes by. I would say
Speaker 2: that I don't think about this particular murder.
Speaker 1: Thirty year old Peterhiscock was one of the first detectives
Speaker 1: to enter the house in Easy Street, and he's never
Speaker 1: forgotten it.
Speaker 2: If I drive up Hoddle Street, it doesn't matter where
Speaker 2: I'm going north or south, I always will go over
Speaker 2: to Easy Street. I know it's changed, but it's just
Speaker 2: something that happens to me. I just look up and
Speaker 2: down there. Now. I've done an extraordinary amount of investigations
Speaker 2: since that time, but there's always something that stays in
Speaker 2: your mind, and those two murders stuck in my mind.
Speaker 1: The murders of twenty seven year old Susan Bartlett and
Speaker 1: twenty eight year old Susanne Armstrong in their own home
Speaker 1: shook the staid city of Melbourne to its heart. Senior
Speaker 1: police warned all women living in the city to take
Speaker 1: care as a sex maniac was on the prow, even
Speaker 1: going as far to advise them to lock their doors
Speaker 1: and windows.
Speaker 3: It's always concerned me the number of women who do
Speaker 3: live alone or secondly stay alone in their homes and
Speaker 3: seem to take no precautions at all. What do you
Speaker 3: mean exactly, Well, they leave doors open, they leave windows open,
Speaker 3: they leave lights on. In other words, they add the time,
Speaker 3: the fact that they are home alone, leave blinds open
Speaker 3: while they're watching Kelly in this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But are you suggesting that those women should lock themselves away.
Speaker 3: I don't suggest they should put themselves in the form
Speaker 3: of being imprisoned, but I think there are certain reasonable
Speaker 3: security measures that people can take to ensure their safety.
Speaker 1: Their language was almost visceral, the details released about the
Speaker 1: attack unpleasantly blunt and from the outset. The deaths of
Speaker 1: the two suits, as the friends were affectionately known, has
Speaker 1: haunted investigators and community, and not just because of the
Speaker 1: terrible violence involved. It's also been dogged by almost implausible circumstance.
Speaker 1: Aside from Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong's killer, three other
Speaker 1: men had gone in and out of their little house
Speaker 1: as they lay dead, apparently unnoticed, just meters away, with
Speaker 1: Suzanne's young son, Gregory, lonely dehydrated and hungary in his cot.
Speaker 1: All three men claimed not to have seen or heard
Speaker 1: anything suspicious during these nocturnal visits. The first to enter
Speaker 1: the house was a friend of Susan's. Incredibly, the night
Speaker 1: after she was killed, he walked up the side lane
Speaker 1: of the property and climbed in her bedroom window, moving
Speaker 1: into the hall, agonizingly close to her body to get
Speaker 1: to the phone in the lounge room. He told police
Speaker 1: later that he had been calling Susan and wanted to
Speaker 1: check that he had the right phone number. After getting
Speaker 1: no answer, reassured that he had the correct number after
Speaker 1: checking the old fashioned war phone in the lounge. He
Speaker 1: then retraced his steps, climbing back outer window and into
Speaker 1: the laneway. A friend was waiting for him there in
Speaker 1: the lane, so could verify this, as hard as it
Speaker 1: is to believe. Twenty four hours later, two brothers entered
Speaker 1: the house through the back door to see if Suzanne
Speaker 1: was home. The oldest of the pair had taken her
Speaker 1: out the previous weekend, and as arranged, tried to ring
Speaker 1: to confirm the next date. Unable to reach her, the
Speaker 1: shearer from Country Victoria decided to pay her a visit
Speaker 1: at home, but he and his brother told detectives that
Speaker 1: after calling out to see if Suzanne and her toddler
Speaker 1: were home, they'd gone no further than the lounge that
Speaker 1: night to check if anyone was there. Instead, the new
Speaker 1: suitor left a note on the kitchen table asking Suzanne
Speaker 1: to call him.
Speaker 4: I went around there that night and just knocked at
Speaker 4: the front door, and there was a note on the door,
Speaker 4: and there was still no answer. So I went down
Speaker 4: the side and the gate was half way open, and
Speaker 4: the door was half way open, and there was a
Speaker 4: light on, and you, brother, I got a note and
Speaker 4: for her to ring me. And then you know, if
Speaker 4: I had walked in a little bit further, well, I
Speaker 4: would have spot on you another couple of yards.
Speaker 2: Did it ever occur to you to look in the
Speaker 2: rest of the house.
Speaker 4: Not really, No, I don't like going in people's houses.
Speaker 4: You know while there's snowing there, So it's being shocked
Speaker 4: to me. Yeah, well, Ida, it was gout to shakes
Speaker 4: and smoke. Can't even eat.
Speaker 1: Forty seven years later, it beggars belief that three people
Speaker 1: did not see here or sense anything amiss when inside
Speaker 1: a house beset by such trauma. Then again, what kind
Speaker 1: of person could encounter a scene like that and not
Speaker 1: raise the alarm. Police believed the three men had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the murders. They were quickly cleared as
Speaker 1: suspects by detectives. The first visitor even allowed to leave
Speaker 1: the country before the coroner's inquest was held, and not
Speaker 1: much was made of their presence at all. But there's
Speaker 1: no denying that their failure to notice anything wrong meant
Speaker 1: that two young women slain had to wait almost two
Speaker 1: and a half days to be found in the summer
Speaker 1: heat in the heart of a busy city. Disconcerting two
Speaker 1: was the fact a man already linked to the disappearance
Speaker 1: of a nineteen year old woman in the city just
Speaker 1: eighteen months earlier, and only a couple of suburbs away,
Speaker 1: had been staying next door on the night of the
Speaker 1: Easy Street murders. For detectives it was a coincidence, too
Speaker 1: ugly to ignore. What were the odds of anyone being
Speaker 1: so close to two such cases? Improbably this man was
Speaker 1: also a crime reporter with Melbourne's Truth newspaper. Such strange
Speaker 1: twists of fact in a high profile homicide investigation are
Speaker 1: almost too bizarre to be true, but they are. When
Speaker 1: alone of Stevens and her housemate Janet Powell caught their
Speaker 1: neighbor's young dog running loose in the street, they had
Speaker 1: no idea of the saga about to engulf them, a
Speaker 1: saga still without end nearly fifty years later. Like the
Speaker 1: two suits, they were bright, busy young women, aloner working
Speaker 1: at the Truth newspaper, Janet co managing Casanova, an Italian
Speaker 1: restaurant in Carlton. The four women had only lived side
Speaker 1: by side for a few months and so hadn't had
Speaker 1: time to really get to know each other.
Speaker 5: Look just as neighbors, nodding hello, how are you? How's baby?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Nice, nice puppy, but not that well, just to talk to,
Speaker 5: because don't forget, Janet and I both worked chief work
Speaker 5: and they worked regular jobs, so because our hours were
Speaker 5: so different, we really didn't ever become friendly, although we
Speaker 5: were roughly the same age.
Speaker 1: Okay, well let's go back to that week of January
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. When did you first notice that something
Speaker 1: might be wrong, something might be a miss.
Speaker 5: Well, probably when I got home from work, because the
Speaker 5: dog was out, and that was very well. It was
Speaker 5: just strange because we lived it's near, very near Hoddle Street,
Speaker 5: and it was only a puppy, so you just don't
Speaker 5: let your dog out, even though in those days, of
Speaker 5: course people were more careless, but it just was unusual
Speaker 5: because they weren't careless people. That was Tuesday, so I
Speaker 5: would have got home from work, puppy was out, went
Speaker 5: straight round, knocked on doc, no answer. Well, I just
Speaker 5: thought that were out, So I took the puppy back
Speaker 5: into our house and just kept it and thought, no, well,
Speaker 5: we'll hear them come home and I'll whip next door then,
Speaker 5: but of course heard nothing.
Speaker 1: Later that Tuesday evening, Alona and Janet tried another tack.
Speaker 1: They left a note on the front door of one
Speaker 1: four seven. It read, dear sus, we have your dog
Speaker 1: which was wandering around the street. You're obviously not home,
Speaker 1: so give us a yell and we'll return. Same to
Speaker 1: you promptly, regards Alona and Janet. Alona left for work
Speaker 1: the next morning and didn't notice the note was still there,
Speaker 1: exactly where they'd left it, But when she got back
Speaker 1: home later that Wednesday evening, she saw the note was
Speaker 1: still pinned to the door and the young dog was
Speaker 1: still in their backyard. More worryingly, as she got ready
Speaker 1: for bed, she could hear little Greg crying, albeit softly,
Speaker 1: from beyond the party wall the two cottages shared.
Speaker 5: Probably by Wednesday night, we were well, Janet not so
Speaker 5: much because she was real busy, you know, the two
Speaker 5: of them were trying to run a restaurant and she
Speaker 5: would just come home, exhausted, fall into bed, get up
Speaker 5: next day, go back to the restaurant. But yeah, just
Speaker 5: was odd. The note was still on the door, We
Speaker 5: still have the dog, and periodically I thought I could
Speaker 5: hear Greg crying. Wimprings. Not nothing major, but you know,
Speaker 5: you put that sort of stuff out of your mind.
Speaker 1: By Thursday morning, both a loner and her housemate Janet
Speaker 1: sent something really wasn't right. A loner recalls being a
Speaker 1: bit cross that a neighbors still hadn't collected their dog,
Speaker 1: but she was becoming increasingly uneasy about Greg's welfare, so
Speaker 1: before going to work, the pair decided to try their
Speaker 1: neighbor's front door again. They knocked loudly, banging harder the
Speaker 1: next time, then harder again. Still no answer. Nothing.
Speaker 5: So I decided I'd hop the fence and opened the
Speaker 5: gate and put the dog in the air. The gate
Speaker 5: was onto the lame way in their garden. We didn't
Speaker 5: have a gate in our garden, so that's when I
Speaker 5: hopped the fence. First thing Thursday morning.
Speaker 1: When Alana walked through the back door and into the kitchen,
Speaker 1: she sang out to the girls to see if they
Speaker 1: were home. She quickly passed through the small lounge room
Speaker 1: and into the hallway that ran along three rooms and
Speaker 1: up to the front door. As her eyes adjusted to
Speaker 1: the dim light, she saw Susan face down on her
Speaker 1: stomach in the hall, heartbreakingly close to that front door,
Speaker 1: and then moving forward, Suzanne on her back on the
Speaker 1: floor of the first bedroom. It was a tableau of
Speaker 1: unfathomable tragedy. Alner could see the women had been brutally killed.
Speaker 1: What she couldn't know at the time was that they
Speaker 1: had been stabbed collectively more than eighty times and Suzanne
Speaker 1: raped after death.
Speaker 5: The back door was open, well, not wide open, but
Speaker 5: certainly unlocked in Ajar. So I walked in saying, do
Speaker 5: you who? Anyone home? And got no reply. But as
Speaker 5: soon as I looked up the hallway it was completely
Speaker 5: obvious why there was no reply.
Speaker 1: And what did you see?
Speaker 5: I actually saw Susan's feet and they didn't look real flash.
Speaker 5: They were you know, sort of black, and you just
Speaker 5: look and you know, you go, oh, this is bad.
Speaker 5: Because the hallway had no windows, you know, the windows
Speaker 5: were in the rooms, so it's quite dark. But I
Speaker 5: do remember clearly seeing her feet and they weren't moving.
Speaker 1: What confronted her as she walked through the house remains daunting,
Speaker 1: especially that long check up the hallway to where Susan
Speaker 1: lay to see if there was anything she could do
Speaker 1: to help her.
Speaker 5: Well, I was still in the middle of going you who,
Speaker 5: So I walked down and as I got closer to her,
Speaker 5: it was very obvious that she was dead, and I
Speaker 5: kind of knelt over just to make sure I didn't
Speaker 5: touch her. She was right. Her head was right at
Speaker 5: the front door, and that's when I looked sideways into
Speaker 5: the front bedroom and saw Suzanne. It was obvious that
Speaker 5: Susan had been almost brutalized. There was sort of handmarks
Speaker 5: on the wall. But Suzanne was lying on her back
Speaker 5: and fairly scantily clad, and it was quite obvious she
Speaker 5: was dead too, And so I just then I turned
Speaker 5: and walked out and yelled out to Janet to call
Speaker 5: the police.
Speaker 1: In her haste to check on Susan and Suzanne alone
Speaker 1: hadn't even glanced at sixteen month old Greg Armstrong, who
Speaker 1: was in his cot in the middle bedroom, But as
Speaker 1: she headed to the back door, she checked on the
Speaker 1: little boy.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: I actually walked in there and had a look at him.
Speaker 5: He was I guess he was probably dehydrated, but he
Speaker 5: seemed fine. So I just kept going and yelling out
Speaker 5: for Janet to quickly call the police.
Speaker 1: Do you remember how she responded to you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it must have been a shock for her even hearing that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I recall she just sort of went why and
Speaker 5: I said, the girls are dead, and she just ran
Speaker 5: inside because in those days we had the black dialar phone,
Speaker 5: so she dialed the police and I just waited outside
Speaker 5: at the front, no out the side, and Alona Stevens
Speaker 5: had to wait for a while.
Speaker 1: She's pretty sure. It took two telephone calls to get
Speaker 1: the local police to take seriously what a housemate was
Speaker 1: reporting two women were dead in the house next door,
Speaker 1: but even then only a young uniformed officer was dispatched
Speaker 1: to see what was going on. One uniformed officer.
Speaker 5: Things sort of moved slowly in your mind, but I
Speaker 5: do remember thinking this is urgent, and then of course
Speaker 5: one car rolled up with someone who is probably my age, saying,
Speaker 5: you know what's going on here? And I said, I
Speaker 5: think my neighbors have been killed.
Speaker 1: The pattern of not hearing women trying to share information
Speaker 1: with police that shadowed this and other call cases in
Speaker 1: Victoria started even before the official investigation.
Speaker 5: I remember there was no urgency from anybody. They certainly
Speaker 5: were not believing us, and hence they sent the young
Speaker 5: man in one car. I was waiting in the lane,
Speaker 5: so he came up to me and I said, look,
Speaker 5: you need to go inside.
Speaker 4: They did.
Speaker 5: He did walk inside, and within it seemed like five
Speaker 5: seconds there were police and cars and uniform and non uniform,
Speaker 5: and we were surrounded by activity.
Speaker 1: Finally, Victoria's homicide squad was at the scene.
Speaker 2: Going there on that day myself, Graha McDonald got a
Speaker 2: call that there was a double death in a house
Speaker 2: in Collingwood. It's a lower socio economic area those times,
Speaker 2: so you never assume anything, but it was quite possible
Speaker 2: it was a murder suicide or just a double suicide.
Speaker 4: Who would know.
Speaker 2: We had no idea because the uniform police had been
Speaker 2: there and they were not to go in. So when
Speaker 2: we arrived there was a young policeman just inside the door.
Speaker 2: He's been guarding it and it was just a scene
Speaker 2: that you'd never ever forget in your life.
Speaker 1: Former Detective Peter Hiscock remained struck by the horrific nature
Speaker 1: of the attacks on both women, Susanne Armstrong first in
Speaker 1: her bedroom and then Susan Bartlett in the hall.
Speaker 2: Still to this day now we're talking about it now,
Speaker 2: I can see it just like a video in my mind.
Speaker 2: And of course then we went around the back being
Speaker 2: the scene. Now scenes that protected a whole lot better
Speaker 2: now than they were there. They're protected then, but they've
Speaker 2: changed a lot now and what you see on TV
Speaker 2: is probably what happens now, but not in those days.
Speaker 2: You're just going to see what's happened. For a start
Speaker 2: to quickly try and assess it. But it didn't take
Speaker 2: myself and Grahea McDonald very long to work out. This
Speaker 2: was one terrible, terrible murder. Two murders that occurred.
Speaker 1: And what did this scene initially, Peter tell you about
Speaker 1: how the girls had died, what the killer had done.
Speaker 2: Killer had used a knife, would have to have been
Speaker 2: a big knife because of the defensive wounds in Susan
Speaker 2: Bartlett's arms. Susan Armstrong had massive, massive, multiple, multiple stab wounds,
Speaker 2: and it looked like there was no forced entry, so
Speaker 2: already it was starting to unfold. This was something quite unique,
Speaker 2: no forced entry. Two girls brutally murdered. Now, in those
Speaker 2: days you wouldn't see too many, and I don't recall
Speaker 2: those days too many brutal murders like these two. I mean,
Speaker 2: with time the internet, we'd see lots of lots of
Speaker 2: these things. But back in those days, back in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven in Victoria, in Collingwood, that was one massive
Speaker 2: double murder.
Speaker 1: The fact that they found young Greg and his court
Speaker 1: having survived such an ordeal still amazes this veteran investigator.
Speaker 2: Well, we were both young parents, Graham and I and
Speaker 2: of course that was very disturbing. He had been there
Speaker 2: and if I recall, the temperatures were in excess of
Speaker 2: one hundred degrees. Now in Celsius, what are we talking,
Speaker 2: this is up over forty degrees. So he was in
Speaker 2: there totally totally exhausted, totally dehydrated, been the same nappy,
Speaker 2: and was quite surprising to me that he was still alive. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, at that age he obviously couldn't witness anything.
Speaker 2: But whether the killer missed him or whatever, I don't know,
Speaker 2: or killer as we would never know. I still to
Speaker 2: this day think it was only one person.
Speaker 1: Peter Hescock says the scene he and his colleagues encountered
Speaker 1: that morning was dire. Nevertheless, it revealed a lot about
Speaker 1: the murderer, and quite quickly.
Speaker 2: Well, if robbery was not a motive, the bathroom we
Speaker 2: now we learned straight away that the killer had stood
Speaker 2: in the bath and washed himself down with blood, because
Speaker 2: he would have been covered in blood. It would have
Speaker 2: been very, very brutal.
Speaker 4: So whether.
Speaker 2: He's done this to wash himself off forensics, or whether
Speaker 2: he's just done that as an instinctive, it's hard to know.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a lot of blood in there, but it
Speaker 2: was yeah, we could tell from going back there that
Speaker 2: that's what happened. Yes, it was very unusual when there's
Speaker 2: no DNA in those days, I mean blood types or something.
Speaker 2: I mean pretty we have a lot of people have
Speaker 2: got A or B or whatever. So that was there.
Speaker 2: That was obviously called for the forensics. But something that
Speaker 2: we did was took the plumbing apart and at the
Speaker 2: elbow there was pieces of bone. Now these were pieces
Speaker 2: of these defensive wounds that Susan Bartlett had put up.
Speaker 1: What you took the bath apart or you were under
Speaker 1: the under the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I personally wasn't there when that happened, but it was, yes,
Speaker 2: it was pulled apart. I actually had to escort the
Speaker 2: to deceased to the mortuary and I had to be
Speaker 2: present whilst the post mortems were undertaken and thereby we
Speaker 2: were given samples of their blood, hair, nails and for continuity.
Speaker 2: They then have to be conveyed back to the forensic
Speaker 2: science by one person to the other break continuity. So
Speaker 2: that was my job. So I was present and that's
Speaker 2: why I'm certain that I know who was murdered first.
Speaker 1: And talking about at the Morgue, Peter, I mean, how
Speaker 1: traumatic was that for you as a young detective. You're
Speaker 1: only thirty. From what you've said to me over the years,
Speaker 1: you were actually helping him take account of the number
Speaker 1: of times both women had been stabbed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would stand it's close to this table. You
Speaker 2: would stand there with a clipboard noting on a diagram
Speaker 2: of a female body where stab wounds were. It is traumatic,
Speaker 2: but we were taught and always emphasized by that pathologist
Speaker 2: that the exhibits that can help us. For instance, is
Speaker 2: the person right handed, is he left handed without uppercuts
Speaker 2: lower cuts, so he changed hands to do other wounds
Speaker 2: because there was strongly amount of stab wounds. And also
Speaker 2: was one killed earlier and then someone came back and
Speaker 2: killed the other one. Those I mean, it's quite basic
Speaker 2: stuff that unfolds very quickly. But you have to be
Speaker 2: there to know these things, and it's not theathologists job
Speaker 2: to work out these things, but they are very helpful.
Speaker 2: And these are things that when you interview someone only
Speaker 2: you will know if someone's telling lies and also tell
Speaker 2: if someone's just making it up or wanting to be famous,
Speaker 2: and that's happened, that's happened many times.
Speaker 1: So what did his time with pathologist James McNamara tell
Speaker 1: him about the Easy Street killer? Was he left or
Speaker 1: right handed?
Speaker 2: I'm thinking it was a right handed person that just
Speaker 2: he would have been a powerful unit. He would have
Speaker 2: been powerful because of the amount of stab wornds making
Speaker 2: sure that he killed them. And Susan Bartlett had put
Speaker 2: up a massive fight in the hallway, so she's heard
Speaker 2: the noise and come down, and that's why it makes
Speaker 2: sense someone's come in the front door. Susan Armstrong was
Speaker 2: reading a book, she had the light on. She's put
Speaker 2: the book down, the pages open, and just thrown the
Speaker 2: sheets back and hopped out to see who it was.
Speaker 2: And then she was struck right between leaving her bed
Speaker 2: very small house, of course, and before getting into the passageway.
Speaker 2: But she was moved further, we believe after she was dead.
Speaker 2: But then Susan Bartlett's come out of her room down
Speaker 2: to see what's going on, and that's when it's second
Speaker 2: murders occurred. But it would have been a lot harder.
Speaker 2: Susan Armstrong wouldn't known what was going to happen to her.
Speaker 2: She would have just met this person and that's why
Speaker 2: we always thought he personally thought must have been someone
Speaker 2: they knew.
Speaker 1: Peterhiscock is still goold by the time. He and his
Speaker 1: partner wasted early on in a case that was already
Speaker 1: getting caught as they tried to link the footprint on
Speaker 1: Susan's bed cover that was left by the first male
Speaker 1: visitor to the house after the women were killed. And
Speaker 1: then there was the newspaper dated that very day, January thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: This paper was puzzling, we thought, Graham and I thought
Speaker 2: straight away that this offender has come back. He's come
Speaker 2: back to see his work or whatever. We just were puzzled.
Speaker 2: We spoke to the young policeman. There no nothing. So
Speaker 2: we actually took them back to the Collingwood Police station
Speaker 2: for a briefing and one of the young fellows we
Speaker 2: said to look, no one's in any trouble. If they
Speaker 2: went into the house, no one's any trouble. What had
Speaker 2: turned out one of the young fellows thinking I've got
Speaker 2: to sit here for wile and guard this scene. He's
Speaker 2: taken the newspaper in when we've arrived, she just put
Speaker 2: it down stepped outside as if to say, well, I
Speaker 2: was here, I didn't go inside, hid me that he'd
Speaker 2: beat in. Well, of course that can change investigation very quickly,
Speaker 2: as I said, the first twenty four hours, because we're thinking, wow,
Speaker 2: this guy's not far away. It was quite quite exciting.
Speaker 2: So he admitted that, so things changed. Back to the
Speaker 2: problem we had was that it was like three hours
Speaker 2: and we had to wait for post wards. So the
Speaker 2: investigation then was ramped right up. Of course, the press
Speaker 2: were all over this. This was probably one of the
Speaker 2: most horrific crimes around that time, and the press got
Speaker 2: hold of this, but it was a difficult investigation. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, we had other serious murders, one out in
Speaker 2: the jail, some bikeies, two bikeies. These are all going
Speaker 2: on up in the country. So looking back now to
Speaker 2: something that happened like that, now, with the resources you
Speaker 2: would have, you'd be able to put a lot more
Speaker 2: into it. But that being said, we covered every every track,
Speaker 2: and I believe I go back in my mind a
Speaker 2: lot because I read things and you criticize. I'd like
Speaker 2: to think that I was Sorah I would have loved
Speaker 2: and all sort of loved were solved. I would hope
Speaker 2: as of getting on in my ears that we would
Speaker 2: be able to solve it and I would be absolutely devastated.
Speaker 2: There was something that we'd missed.
Speaker 1: Looking back, he shouldn't be too hard on himself. Then,
Speaker 1: A young detective, Peterhiscock, was rostered off on annual leave
Speaker 1: days after walking into the little house in Easy Street
Speaker 1: and never reassigned to the case. But something was missed
Speaker 1: in those summer days of January nineteen seventy seven, and
Speaker 1: nearly five decades later, Susan and Suzanne's deaths remained distant
Speaker 1: yet impossibly close for family, friends, and at least one detective.
Speaker 2: Look, this guy has done something so bad, so bad
Speaker 2: that yeah, humanity just would never even forgive him, no
Speaker 2: matter who the relative was. What he did to those
Speaker 2: two girls could never ever ever be forgiven by anyone.
Speaker 1: Next time, on the Easy Street Murders.
Speaker 5: Forty five years ago, a single mother was regarded very poorly.
Speaker 4: My girlfriend rang me at work and said there's been
Speaker 4: a murder in Collingwood.
Speaker 5: She didn't turn up, so we rang.
Speaker 2: She didn't answer.