Speaker 1: For more than forty years. There have been many misconceptions
Speaker 1: about the murders and Easy Street. At the top of
Speaker 1: this list was a widely held view that one of
Speaker 1: the homicide squad's initial suspects was the killer, and journalists
Speaker 1: in Melbourne talked openly about one of their colleagues being
Speaker 1: the murderer. They were wrong. The introduction of DNA quickly
Speaker 1: disproved this so called theory, but it also meant that
Speaker 1: it took twenty years for the crime reporter's name to
Speaker 1: be cleared what must have been an ordeal by any standard.
Speaker 1: There was also another significant misunderstanding about this case seven
Speaker 1: years ago when I started researching it for the book
Speaker 1: Murder on Easy Street. The same year a million dollar
Speaker 1: award was posted for information in the double homicide. It
Speaker 1: was accepted as fact that no one had seen or
Speaker 1: heard anything on the night that two women died, or
Speaker 1: in the days and nights that followed before their bodies
Speaker 1: were finally found by next door neighbor ALONEA Stevens. It
Speaker 1: was always hard to believe. Surely someone had noticed something
Speaker 1: that made them uneasy at the time. Then again, surely
Speaker 1: detectives working the case in the decades that followed would
Speaker 1: have found anyone who'd seen something, but the official narrative
Speaker 1: remained the same. There were no witnesses, end of story.
Speaker 1: Yet it wasn't. In fact, this is a story in
Speaker 1: itself because no less than three people had something to
Speaker 1: share with police, and two are still alive. Back in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, twenty one year old Peter Sellers was
Speaker 1: living in his family's home at one three nine Easy Street.
Speaker 1: His father had been born in the house, so the
Speaker 1: family were true Collingwood Stalwarts.
Speaker 2: I knew the area really well. Yeah. We used to
Speaker 2: walk the streets of the night and there was no
Speaker 2: no hassles, no nothing. You just did what you had
Speaker 2: to do. There was ay in Greece. Australians all up
Speaker 2: and down the street, and we all grew up with
Speaker 2: each other for ten years or so.
Speaker 1: And you went to school there obviously primary in high school.
Speaker 2: Yes, we went to Victoria Park Primary School and then
Speaker 2: went to Vitual High School. Then pursued a job as
Speaker 2: an apprentice jockey.
Speaker 1: The night the two women were killed, his parents and
Speaker 1: sister were away on holiday, so Peter and his mate Ray,
Speaker 1: who has since passed away, were up late. They stayed
Speaker 1: up till about two thirty that Tuesday morning, January eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and that's when they heard three very
Speaker 1: distinct loud noises.
Speaker 2: And then we're watching movies, having to drink or so,
Speaker 2: and it's about two thirty. Ray slept on the couch.
Speaker 2: I went up to my bedroom was at the front
Speaker 2: of the house and just hop into bed and there
Speaker 2: was a bang, the front door closing, and two car
Speaker 2: doors in rapid succession closing, and the car just sped
Speaker 2: off up towards my street. Yeah, seek back, and at
Speaker 2: the time he go, you know what was that? I
Speaker 2: had to look out the window. Was it going outside
Speaker 2: to find out? But yeah, I just took off. And
Speaker 2: the next morning I got up and I said to Rage,
Speaker 2: hear the noise? He said yeah, he said it was
Speaker 2: that loud you could not hear it. So during that
Speaker 2: day I never gave another thought.
Speaker 1: Two more days and nights would pass before the girl's
Speaker 1: bodies and young Gregory were found. But the next night, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: January twelve, Peter Seller saw three people, two men and
Speaker 1: a woman, standing out front of the two suits house
Speaker 1: us more specifically, in front of the service lane that
Speaker 1: ran alongside it.
Speaker 2: On the Wednesday, Mom and dad and my sister and
Speaker 2: husband Johome from Queensland. I was home waiting about eight
Speaker 2: thirty at night and I heard a car door and
Speaker 2: I thought it was them. Walked out the front and
Speaker 2: the step at the front of the house is high
Speaker 2: so you can see down the street, and there was
Speaker 2: a dark haired guy standing that where the gutter and
Speaker 2: the laneway met with the laneway between the two houses.
Speaker 2: Fair haired guy standing at the entrance to the laneway,
Speaker 2: and he was onto a dark haired girl. It was
Speaker 2: a minute or so then they kissed each other on
Speaker 2: the treek. She turned and walked towards Hoddle straight and
Speaker 2: he turned and walked up the lane way and then
Speaker 2: there the lame way backs onto my house. So I
Speaker 2: walked out into the backyard and my dog, Sindy, she's
Speaker 2: just running around wagon her tail, no care in the world.
Speaker 2: So I thought that's fine, walked back out the front
Speaker 2: and no one was there. They were all gone.
Speaker 1: So when you say you saw one of the guys
Speaker 1: walk up the lane rate not the other guy.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. As soon as the other guy turned
Speaker 2: to walk up the lame way, I walked inside to
Speaker 2: the backyard. So I don't know where the other guy
Speaker 2: actually went up the lame way. I don't know, and.
Speaker 1: You were just checking the security aspect of it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I didn't know where he was going. I didn't
Speaker 2: know who he was, And because the lame way backed
Speaker 2: onto the house, I just wasn't too sure.
Speaker 1: His family got home in the early hours of the
Speaker 1: next day, so he didn't get a chance to mention
Speaker 1: anything to his parents until he got home from work
Speaker 1: on that Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know anything had happened until I finished work.
Speaker 2: And back then the old milk bars had the signs
Speaker 2: out the front with the headlines on it and murder,
Speaker 2: and that's when I read all about it. But I
Speaker 2: went got shires to be honest. So I seen these
Speaker 2: two guys. I didn't know who they were. So I
Speaker 2: walked home and as I got around the corner of
Speaker 2: the people were so I walked on the other side
Speaker 2: of the road and then into the house. Why to
Speaker 2: get away. There was reporters and everybody there, and I
Speaker 2: saw guys who I didn't know who they were, So
Speaker 2: I my lot not happy. So I walked inside and
Speaker 2: I said the mum and my dad. I think I
Speaker 2: may have seen them.
Speaker 1: The next day, while he was at work, Peter says,
Speaker 1: two detectives came to his house looking for information that
Speaker 1: Easy Street residents might be able to give them. Peter
Speaker 1: says his mother, father, sister, and his brother in law
Speaker 1: were virtually interrogated by the homicide team.
Speaker 2: Why because when they come home, they actually drove into
Speaker 2: the laneway and reversed out to park the car, and
Speaker 2: they wanted to know what they saw. And of course
Speaker 2: there were reports there was a light on in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: My sister, who passed away two years ago, will state
Speaker 2: until then that when they pulled into the lame way,
Speaker 2: there's no light on in the kitchen at all. She's
Speaker 2: quite adamant. And yet when the police turned up, there
Speaker 2: was a light on the kitchen, So that's another mystery.
Speaker 2: And then they said that mum was anybody else's home.
Speaker 2: Mum said, my son was home, and they wrote my
Speaker 2: name down, Big Astros, and they said we'll be back
Speaker 2: tonight to interview him. Until this day, I haven't seen them.
Speaker 1: And what does that make you think, Peter? I mean,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they come back and talk to you?
Speaker 2: The main reason I got they were focused on one
Speaker 2: person and one person only, the boyfriend from what I
Speaker 2: can remember back and everybody else's the police had blinkers on,
Speaker 2: to be honest, that's my thought of it, that they
Speaker 2: were after one person and one person only.
Speaker 1: For more than four decades, Peter Sellers waited for homicide
Speaker 1: to contact him to learn what he heard and saw
Speaker 1: in the street that week of the murders. He's not
Speaker 1: embarrassed to say he was scared. He truly believed he'd
Speaker 1: seen the killers. But in twenty seventeen, at the urging
Speaker 1: of his late sister Robin, he finally reached out to
Speaker 1: police and ran crime stoppers. With the cold case back
Speaker 1: in the news again on its forty year anniversary and
Speaker 1: Robin on his tail, he felt he had no choice.
Speaker 2: So I rang him up and you put on hold,
Speaker 2: and I'm waiting and waiting, and I started sweating, sweating,
Speaker 2: and I thought, you know, I'm not the guilty one here.
Speaker 2: But they come on. So I started explaining everything. They
Speaker 2: were very quiet on the phone, last me if what
Speaker 2: I saw what I heard. Then they waited for me.
Speaker 2: I reckon to give him a name, and I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I don't know who they were or that is there
Speaker 2: anything else? And the version wasn't a lot, so I hung.
Speaker 1: Up to this day, Peter Sellers believes more than one
Speaker 1: person was involved in this case, and he can't forget
Speaker 1: what he heard earlier that morning in Easy Street.
Speaker 2: The front door slam and within seconds two car doors
Speaker 2: bang bang, and then the car sped off. Whit's on
Speaker 2: heading up towards Smith Street. And that will never leave me,
Speaker 2: and till this day, until I die, I'm convinced there
Speaker 2: were two killers, not one totally to me. No one
Speaker 2: said they hurt anything, but I was four doors away
Speaker 2: and that was as loud as anything. Now, other people
Speaker 2: must have heard it.
Speaker 1: Surely a lot of people listening to this are probably thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, such a long time ago, it's nearly
Speaker 1: five decades ago. Has it grown bigger in your mind?
Speaker 1: Have I've you know, really exaggerated it?
Speaker 2: No, not one bit. I can close my eyes and
Speaker 2: hear exactly what happened, and the seconds between the door,
Speaker 2: the two car doors and the car taking off. It
Speaker 2: was me, mum, Never forget it.
Speaker 1: A written statement sent to me by the Victoria Police
Speaker 1: Media Office in the run up to this podcast said
Speaker 1: investigators will talk to Peter Sellers in the future. The
Speaker 1: good news is they have, and we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in more detail later. Yet they ignored him for forty
Speaker 1: five years. A man now sixty six, who not only
Speaker 1: heard something unusual on the night of these murders, but
Speaker 1: who saw three people outside the so called murder house
Speaker 1: some thirteen hours before the women's bodies were found. Given that,
Speaker 1: what do we make of another neighbor's claim, A woman
Speaker 1: who lived across the road from the Sellers in Easy
Speaker 1: Street and says she heard a man's voice later that
Speaker 1: same night, saying the teachers had been killed. Christina for
Speaker 1: Tourists came to Easy Street in nineteen seventy and has
Speaker 1: lived there ever since. The knowledge in Arean loves the suburb,
Speaker 1: but is still troubled by that strange snatch of conversation
Speaker 1: she heard that night she was in bed with her
Speaker 1: husband when a man walked past their house, apparently talking
Speaker 1: to someone else.
Speaker 3: I am not sure, drim or someone passed the middle
Speaker 3: of the night and says, somebody kill the two teachers tonight.
Speaker 3: I work up in the morning, I say to my husband,
Speaker 3: to my kids, because I have boy a yell, something happened,
Speaker 3: someone passed or dreamer.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: When I walk well outside, I.
Speaker 5: Saw so many people down there, police people come, and
Speaker 5: so what happened on there?
Speaker 6: Give the two teachers what?
Speaker 1: Yes, Detectives never knocked on Christina's door as they gathered
Speaker 1: information after the murders or in the years since. To
Speaker 1: be fair, she never expected them to, nor has the
Speaker 1: retired machinists try to report what she heard, assuming that
Speaker 1: have just dismissed her as quote, a crazy Greek woman unquote.
Speaker 1: But the more she's thought about it over the decades,
Speaker 1: the more she believes that what she heard wasn't a dream.
Speaker 1: It was a man talking as he walked past her house.
Speaker 2: Not dream.
Speaker 3: Maybe somebody walk in the street and he had that.
Speaker 2: If I did outside still it was dark. I can't nice.
Speaker 3: Yes, I can't tell.
Speaker 6: You one tall susan.
Speaker 5: I think the other one kelly hair beautiful, not to
Speaker 5: fix it, just border with kel hair and have big
Speaker 5: dog like this one dog with long hair playing with
Speaker 5: her Greg always outside.
Speaker 3: But the dog I think very friendly and not why
Speaker 3: or otherwise he tried to do something.
Speaker 1: Did you hear anything on the night I died?
Speaker 3: Which was a couple of only this one the night
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 4: Somebody say, kill the two teachers tonight.
Speaker 1: While Christina for Tourist's officially undocumented claim is disconcerting and
Speaker 1: Peter Seller's experienced troubling, what happened to the most important
Speaker 1: witness in this case borders on implausible, indeed intolerable. Gladys
Speaker 1: Coventry lived next door to the two suits with her
Speaker 1: husband Clive, on the other side of the service lane
Speaker 1: in one four five Easy Street, and on that awful
Speaker 1: summer evening in nineteen seventy seven, she was sitting up
Speaker 1: alone in her launde room and late that night she
Speaker 1: saw a man in the house next door. I first
Speaker 1: heard this incredible story when I spoke to the late
Speaker 1: Brian Murphy, one of Australia's more colorful detectives, who died
Speaker 1: just before this podcast was finished. The former Armed Robbery
Speaker 1: Squad veteran mentioned it almost in passing when I rang
Speaker 1: to ask what he knew about the murders. He'd never
Speaker 1: worked in homicide, but I expected him to have a
Speaker 1: unique perspective on the historic investigation. He did, but what
Speaker 1: he told me was confounding.
Speaker 4: Yes, I remember telling her that somebody had information that
Speaker 4: this particular woman had looked across into the house where
Speaker 4: the murders took place and she saw a person washing
Speaker 4: bloodstained clothing out, and that the police heard about it
Speaker 4: and they wanted to send a policeman in. But she
Speaker 4: had a dislike to policeman, not a hatred, but a
Speaker 4: dislike because she'd most probably gone through tough times as
Speaker 4: a lot of people in those working classes areas did,
Speaker 4: and had a certain opinion of the police, and she
Speaker 4: didn't want to trust anybody.
Speaker 1: I think she tried to tell them initially, didn't.
Speaker 4: She apparently so, Yes. But the funny part about it
Speaker 4: was they sent a doctor in. He was bigger than
Speaker 4: the average wishman and had a most authoritative voice, and
Speaker 4: he went in. She sh'd d're a copper, get out.
Speaker 4: I don't want to talk to you, and I think
Speaker 4: basically that's what I told you.
Speaker 1: To be honest, it was pretty hard to process what
Speaker 1: Brian the Skull Murphy told me during our first conversation
Speaker 1: on the phone. Could police really have failed to take
Speaker 1: such a potentially important witness seriously? Peterhiscock, one of the
Speaker 1: first detectives on the scene, didn't work on the case
Speaker 1: long enough to be able to shed light on this
Speaker 1: apparent conundrum. But Murphy, who had two books written about
Speaker 1: his controversial career, had little doubt about what happened. He
Speaker 1: believed that when seventy two year old Gladys Coventry approached police,
Speaker 1: they effectively dismissed her. Then, days later, realizing she was
Speaker 1: probably their best lead in terms of trying to identify
Speaker 1: the killer, they went back to her house and tried
Speaker 1: to talk with her. But by that stage, it seems
Speaker 1: missus Coventry had had enough.
Speaker 4: Some police would have an opinion of themselves and they
Speaker 4: knock to go and crawl to somebody asked them, please
Speaker 4: tell me a million different ways of getting an information
Speaker 4: out of people, and those skills are very few and
Speaker 4: far between. As a policeman, I would have kissed her
Speaker 4: feet if you told me something like that, it's just gold.
Speaker 1: It was truly an astonishing revelation, but could it be verified?
Speaker 1: With Victoria's homicide squad rebuffing all my written and verbal
Speaker 1: requests for an interview about the case, retired Detective Murphy's
Speaker 1: very specific cold case tale spurred me into doing my
Speaker 1: own doorknock in Easy Street to see if there was
Speaker 1: anyone who knew Gladys Coventry and perhaps had even heard her.
Speaker 1: As it happened, there was. When I knocked on the
Speaker 1: door of one three nine Easy Street, ironically Peter Seller's
Speaker 1: family home for so long, I met retired history teacher
Speaker 1: Hugh Parry Jones, and he quickly revealed that not only
Speaker 1: had he known missus Coventry, he'd actually discussed the murders
Speaker 1: with her. The two neighbors started chatting over her rickety
Speaker 1: side fence as Hugh cleared out his new backyard, using
Speaker 1: the lane to position his skip for the rubbish. What
Speaker 1: she disclosed still perplexes him.
Speaker 6: Well, she told me that she was sitting there at
Speaker 6: the window because it was a hot night, and that's
Speaker 6: how she kept cool in her house with the back
Speaker 6: door open. And she said she saw a bloke leaving
Speaker 6: out the back gate, where he turned sharply towards the street.
Speaker 6: My thoughts are that as a possibility, he could have
Speaker 6: seen her from the same position if her lights were on,
Speaker 6: or the moon was shining in her window or whatever.
Speaker 6: So she herself was possibly in some sort of danger,
Speaker 6: but that was it. She saw him turn and leave
Speaker 6: with a knife in his hand.
Speaker 1: Yep, And when she told you, that, what was your
Speaker 1: initial response?
Speaker 5: Ah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was very shocked, because I'm sure I said
Speaker 6: to her, well, I'm sure you told the police, and
Speaker 6: she said that they weren't very interested in what she
Speaker 6: had to say. I think she was very disappointed in
Speaker 6: the reaction and behavior of the police, who didn't seem
Speaker 6: to want to give her any credit.
Speaker 1: Did you believe her?
Speaker 6: Absolutely? I didn't see that she had any reason to
Speaker 6: make it up. She seemed pretty genuine and solid in
Speaker 6: her memories of the events and was only too happy
Speaker 6: to tell me when I pressed her. I had no
Speaker 6: idea that when I was talking to her, I was
Speaker 6: finding out stuff that was not in the public domain.
Speaker 6: I just assumed I'd missed that evidence because it seemed
Speaker 6: such a bombshell.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was a bombshell, and the second version
Speaker 1: of what Gladys Coventry saw on the night Susan and
Speaker 1: Suzanne were killed. Clearly, they were two very different accounts,
Speaker 1: but they shared the most crucial point. She'd seen a
Speaker 1: man in the house the night or early morning of
Speaker 1: the double homicide. And now finally we've uncovered missus Coventry's
Speaker 1: own explanation of what she saw in quite precise detail,
Speaker 1: In other words, the actual buried lead of this story
Speaker 1: within a story. But finding it wasn't easy. Just as
Speaker 1: Hugh Parry Jones was astonished by what she told him,
Speaker 1: her immediate family was stunned when what she'd witnessed came
Speaker 1: to light in Murder on Easy Street, my book that
Speaker 1: was published in twenty nineteen. Initially, her granddaughter tried politely
Speaker 1: to convinced me that it just wasn't true that I
Speaker 1: had been misled lied to. Yet after much discussion over
Speaker 1: many months, she and her siblings came to accept that
Speaker 1: it was correct and there was more to this family saga.
Speaker 1: Since reading the book a couple of years ago, Gladys
Speaker 1: Coventry's grandchildren have been searching for a newspaper report they
Speaker 1: suddenly remembered seeing around the time of the killings. They
Speaker 1: were adamant the paper ran a photo of their grandma
Speaker 1: on the front page. They just couldn't find the copy
Speaker 1: their late mother had kept tucked away for so long,
Speaker 1: or remember which paper it was in. Was it the
Speaker 1: Old Herald or Son the Age, or maybe a local
Speaker 1: paper from where they lived in the country, or even
Speaker 1: the bi weekly truth. It was baffling and kind of
Speaker 1: drove them crazy. I couldn't find it either, and none
Speaker 1: of the crime journals and former detectives I spoke to
Speaker 1: who were steeped in this history recall ever having seen it.
Speaker 1: But Gladys Coventry's granddaughter finally uncovered it, or at least
Speaker 1: her husband did. This discovery followed the Victoria Police media
Speaker 1: unit sending me an email unexpectedly really after so many years,
Speaker 1: imploring them to discuss Gladys Coventry's role in this saga,
Speaker 1: revealing the detectives had taken her statement on February eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. Not only does this confirm that they
Speaker 1: didn't talk to her formerly until a year after the
Speaker 1: two women were murdered, it also came after a veteran
Speaker 1: crime reporter interviewed her first. Because the newspaper story that
Speaker 1: Missus Coventry's grandchildren remembered seeing was in truth. On January
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, nineteen seventy eight, an old fashioned scoop by
Speaker 1: Joerno Jack, ailing no doubt to coincide with the first
Speaker 1: awful anniversary of the young women's deaths. I saw man
Speaker 1: with girls, screamed the tabloid's misleading from page headline. Watch
Speaker 1: them for fifteen minutes, and yes there was Gladys Coventry's
Speaker 1: photo on two pages in the paper. Now, while she's
Speaker 1: willing to discuss this unexpected chapter in her family history,
Speaker 1: Missus Coventry's granddaughter doesn't want is to use her real name.
Speaker 1: The killer, after all, is still free, so we'll call
Speaker 1: her Melanie, and she believes her Nana's long lost interview
Speaker 1: sheds new light on this cold case.
Speaker 7: I think it's illuminating to the situation for both the
Speaker 7: girls and my grandmother. On that night. We didn't have
Speaker 7: the details of what Nana was doing and saying to
Speaker 7: the police. But indeed, it feels as though, when you know,
Speaker 7: I look at this article, that she may have tried
Speaker 7: to speak to the police and wasn't respected. It is
Speaker 7: hard to know, but maybe this article has eventuated because
Speaker 7: it's around that, you know, one year anniversary, and someone
Speaker 7: has thought to go and talk to my grandmother.
Speaker 1: What does surprise her is that it was a reporter
Speaker 1: from a newspaper, specifically truth.
Speaker 7: I don't know how it eventuated that, you know, she
Speaker 7: spoke to journalists from The Truth. I just feel that
Speaker 7: she may not have been fully aware that she was
Speaker 7: going to be on the front page of The Truth,
Speaker 7: and it wasn't a popular paper in the household at
Speaker 7: the time.
Speaker 1: But the thing that's interesting is when you were growing
Speaker 1: up as kids, you'd obviously seen her in the paper,
Speaker 1: but did you know what it was about.
Speaker 7: I personally think that we were very shielded. I think
Speaker 7: when that article came out, and I know that my
Speaker 7: siblings said that they actually found it. I saw it
Speaker 7: in the newsagents and my mother told them to run
Speaker 7: back and buy it. It was brought home and I
Speaker 7: certainly saw the front page, but I think that paper
Speaker 7: was actually sort of taken away and the details were
Speaker 7: not revealed to us. I think also it reflects that
Speaker 7: there was a worry. There was a worry for my grandmother,
Speaker 7: There was a worry for us that you know, we
Speaker 7: would feel stressed by the situation and be afraid, and
Speaker 7: I think that we were being protected.
Speaker 1: I asked though, because remember when you were you and
Speaker 1: I met for the first time, was when the book
Speaker 1: Murder an Easy Suit was launched, and you came and said,
Speaker 1: where did you get that story about Missus Coventry because
Speaker 1: it's not right. And I said, well, this is you
Speaker 1: know where I got it from. You you said, will
Speaker 1: know she's my grandmother, and that's not right. So in
Speaker 1: a sense, even though you saw the story, because you
Speaker 1: hadn't talked about it as a family, it was a
Speaker 1: story kept secret within your family.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. And you know, I even read this article, and
Speaker 7: there's things in this article that you know, I was
Speaker 7: not aware of. I think it actually had been deliberately
Speaker 7: kept secret from us.
Speaker 1: We'll never know how long reporter Jack Ailing spent with
Speaker 1: Gladys Coventry. Yet, while the interview itself wasn't all that long,
Speaker 1: the detail the older woman gave him about the man
Speaker 1: she saw with Susan Bartlett was vital. He was tall,
Speaker 1: had dark hair, and was wearing a short sleeved shirt,
Speaker 1: not surprising really, given it was such a hot night,
Speaker 1: and he seemed at ease in the house with Sue.
Speaker 1: To some extent. The fact that Missus Coventry was willing
Speaker 1: to finally put this on the record must have been
Speaker 1: due to the journalists putting her it is too. This
Speaker 1: doesn't surprise Elona Stevens, who lived on the other side
Speaker 1: of the two suits house and found their bodies three
Speaker 1: days after they were killed. Working a truth at the time,
Speaker 1: Alona remembers Jack Ailing well.
Speaker 8: Police rounds and crime with his section, and he'd have
Speaker 8: been in his fifties, but typical old school journo.
Speaker 1: And when missus Coventry saw him, I mean, would he
Speaker 1: have just come to the door, knocked on the door
Speaker 1: and asked her talk to her?
Speaker 8: Well, that's really interesting. I imagine he would have. You know,
Speaker 8: he would have had a presence about him, you know,
Speaker 8: a professional style presence that would have probably she would
Speaker 8: have reacted to like any other professional. He had a
Speaker 8: terrific voice, actually he had one of those lower melodious voices.
Speaker 8: And he would have come across as a very as
Speaker 8: an educated, sensible, older person, someone she could trust.
Speaker 1: Her granddaughter Melanie thinks or suspects that that maybe her
Speaker 1: Nan thought she was talking to the police when Jack
Speaker 1: Ailing arrived at the door, that maybe she thought he
Speaker 1: was a detective finally coming back to talk to her,
Speaker 1: because as we remember, she tried to tell them that
Speaker 1: she'd seen this guy in the house, you know, the
Speaker 1: day you found the bodies, but they dismissed her is
Speaker 1: that possible. Could he have been mistaken for a detective look?
Speaker 8: He could have physically, well, he'd have certainly been dressed
Speaker 8: like one, because that was just the classic mode of
Speaker 8: dress in those days, dark suit, white shirt and tie.
Speaker 8: And as I said, he had that older man presence
Speaker 8: that you know, a professional person would have, and so
Speaker 8: it wouldn't be unusual for her to assume that given
Speaker 8: the questions he was asking. But that's what it was.
Speaker 1: You made an interesting observation, I mean, as an old journalist,
Speaker 1: as a former journalist, when you looked at the way
Speaker 1: Missus Coventry was photographed, what does that say to you?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it immediately says to me that she didn't really
Speaker 8: know she was being photographed. She was busy talking, probably
Speaker 8: to Jack, and the photographers just gone, yeah, this is
Speaker 8: a good click, click, click, because not in those old days,
Speaker 8: the cameras were different and he could stand away and
Speaker 8: do that and she probably wouldn't have noticed. But both photos,
Speaker 8: the front page photo and the page two photo both
Speaker 8: looked to me as if she's focusing on something else,
Speaker 8: not on having a photo taken.
Speaker 1: Having said all that, to be fair, this interview actually
Speaker 1: pushes or could have pushed the investigation forward, had they
Speaker 1: spoken to her properly the year before. She describes the
Speaker 1: man in some detail. He was tall, he had dark hair,
Speaker 1: not black hair, but dark brown hair. He was there,
Speaker 1: obviously for a while, and very relaxed. With Susan Bartlett.
Speaker 1: This is not just a fleeting glimpse.
Speaker 8: No, And the description is you'd have to say authentic
Speaker 8: and authorized because she goes into such detail. This is
Speaker 8: not Oh, I think I saw someone who may or
Speaker 8: may not have. I was certain I saw it. This
Speaker 8: is a year later, so I mean, I'm imagining had
Speaker 8: a fair bit of information the day after, which the
Speaker 8: police didn't bother to follow up.
Speaker 1: And the other thing, of course, it's blindingly obvious, is
Speaker 1: if they'd had this description a year earlier, or even
Speaker 1: at this point in nineteen seventy eight, and released it
Speaker 1: and also got her to sit down with a sketch
Speaker 1: artist and draw on a composite, you know, a little
Speaker 1: identicit sketch. I mean, how important would that have been,
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 8: I think incredibly important, because she would appear to be
Speaker 8: the only eyewitness, and even if it's in the dark
Speaker 8: from ten feet away, she's still an eyewitness. And would
Speaker 8: still have remembered something, which is, as you know, Helen,
Speaker 8: it's always sat with me that I should have remembered
Speaker 8: something and I simply can't. But she was there and
Speaker 8: she saw something, So you know, it amazes me that
Speaker 8: the police didn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: As Elona Stevens describes him, the veteran crime journe, it
Speaker 1: was quite a character, not unlike Melanie's grandmother by all accounts.
Speaker 7: Physically, she was very short person. She lost her hair
Speaker 7: early in life, so she wore a wig. So she
Speaker 7: was fairly distinctive character. And I'm pretty sure that most
Speaker 7: of the people in the street knew her. She tended
Speaker 7: to wear the same sort of trench coat and trudge
Speaker 7: along the street with a little trolley behind. And she,
Speaker 7: as I said, she was deaf, or reasonably deaf if
Speaker 7: she needed to be. She was very deaf. And she
Speaker 7: would very classically ignore anybody she did not want to
Speaker 7: communicate with, and she'd go out of a way to
Speaker 7: communicate with people that she did want to chat with.
Speaker 7: I know that she had friends across the road, Ruby
Speaker 7: and Jim, and I don't know what happened to Ruby,
Speaker 7: and but you know, there might have been people next
Speaker 7: saw that she would never speak to because she chose
Speaker 7: not to. She would be a classic character in a novel.
Speaker 1: A little bit like Via she does.
Speaker 7: Actually, she looked a bit like Vera too.
Speaker 1: And like Vera Stanhope, the fictional British detective. She was
Speaker 1: on the case very early that Tuesday morning, January eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. She told the reporter that she'd gone
Speaker 1: to bed the night before at about ten, but awoke
Speaker 1: at two am, probably because it was so hot. She
Speaker 1: got up and walked towards the back of her house,
Speaker 1: and that's when she saw Sue talking to a tall
Speaker 1: man with dark hair. Melanie's happy to read her nana's words.
Speaker 7: They were very nice girls, very quiet and kept themselves.
Speaker 7: I went to bed on the in the front room
Speaker 7: at about ten o'clock that night night. It was a
Speaker 7: very warm evening. I don't know what happened, but I
Speaker 7: woke up at about two o'clock. I got up and
Speaker 7: went down the hallway in the darkness, on the way
Speaker 7: to the kitchen to get a glass of water or something.
Speaker 7: As I passed through my lunge room, I saw light
Speaker 7: was on in the room. In the house opposite. The
Speaker 7: blind was up about eighteen inches. I sat down in
Speaker 7: the lounge chair in the darkness. It was cooler there.
Speaker 7: I looked across and could see Miss Bartlett and a
Speaker 7: man in the room. Miss Bartlett and a man were
Speaker 7: sitting at each end of a small table near the window.
Speaker 7: I could hear music playing. It was very loud. They
Speaker 7: were talking and laughing and drinking out of little glasses.
Speaker 7: They couldn't see me because I was in the dark.
Speaker 7: Miss Bartlett was wearing a long colored kaftan dress. It
Speaker 7: had white sleeves. She often wore these sorts of dresses,
Speaker 7: and they used to see her in the street. The
Speaker 7: man was very tall. He had dark hair, but not black,
Speaker 7: it was sort of brown. She goes on to describe
Speaker 7: what he was wearing. She says, I must have watched
Speaker 7: them for fifteen minutes. They didn't get up to change
Speaker 7: any of the music. I think it was coming from
Speaker 7: one of those high fi things. I saw them both
Speaker 7: stand up. They moved towards each other, and when they
Speaker 7: were close, Miss Butler put her arms around the man's neck.
Speaker 7: I thought they were going to kiss, but the man
Speaker 7: didn't put his arms around her. She kept her arms
Speaker 7: around him for a little while, and then they sat
Speaker 7: down again. They didn't kiss. I then got up and
Speaker 7: went to bed.
Speaker 1: So it's quite a detailed recollection, isn't it. It certainly is
Speaker 1: an eyewitness account.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, and as I said, she could see well. There
Speaker 7: was nothing wrong with her eyesight and there was nothing
Speaker 7: wrong with her interpretation of situations. What does it mean?
Speaker 1: The Lattice Coventry came to Australia when her family migrated
Speaker 1: from England. She was eight or nine at the time.
Speaker 1: She eventually married Melanie's grandfather and they had one child,
Speaker 1: her mother, before he died. She remarried years later, and
Speaker 1: that's when she moved to Easy Street with her new
Speaker 1: husband and longtime Collingwood resident, Clive Coventry.
Speaker 7: He had lived there, I think most of his life,
Speaker 7: I think, except maybe born in Tasmania from memory, and
Speaker 7: he lived there with his mum I think alone, but
Speaker 7: I can't be sure of that. And his mother died
Speaker 7: and then he married my grandmother and she moved in
Speaker 7: and she would have been how old she would have been,
Speaker 7: in the sixties, I guess when she moved in there.
Speaker 7: I think they were quite happy living there doing you know,
Speaker 7: the things that older old people in their sixties to. So, yeah,
Speaker 7: just sort of watching the horse races and you know,
Speaker 7: minding their own business around Collingwood, popping up to the
Speaker 7: hotels on occasions, and she was very good cook, and yeah,
Speaker 7: they were very comfortable.
Speaker 1: With each other, I think, But by the mid seventies
Speaker 1: things had changed dramatically. Missus Coventry continued to work as
Speaker 1: a housekeeper and cue, but she was also caring for
Speaker 1: her husband, who developed a severe form of dementia. His
Speaker 1: condition was so serious that Melanie's father installed locks on
Speaker 1: doors inside their cottage to keep both Clive and his
Speaker 1: wife safe. There was one on the lounge room side
Speaker 1: of the hallway, another on the outside of his bedroom.
Speaker 7: That's correct. He was suffering from a dementia that on
Speaker 7: occasions he had what I guess we would call hallucinations
Speaker 7: or distortions of what was going on. And there were
Speaker 7: incidents in and around that time that where he was
Speaker 7: potentially violent and my grandmother may have felt unsafe. So
Speaker 7: my father did put locks on the doors so that
Speaker 7: she could remain safe within the house and he was
Speaker 7: contained within the house.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that eighty four year old Clive
Speaker 1: Coventry was never considered a person of interest in the
Speaker 1: Easy Street murders, despite his violent episodes. Illness was probably
Speaker 1: another reason Gladys Coventry was sitting up by the window
Speaker 1: early that morning. Now the truth story has been reclaimed
Speaker 1: from the archives, so many aspects of her account of
Speaker 1: what she saw next door seem significant. Certainly, from what
Speaker 1: she recalled, there was nothing troubling about the demeanor of
Speaker 1: either Sue or her male visitor, and there was no
Speaker 1: sign of Suzanne Armstrong. Could she have been asleep in
Speaker 1: the front of the house, was there another man with
Speaker 1: her in her bedroom at the same time, or was
Speaker 1: someone else lurking outside waiting for Sue's visitor to leave. Clearly,
Speaker 1: missus Coventry's observations challenge our perceptions about what could have
Speaker 1: happened that night. As we know, the long held version
Speaker 1: of events, excepted for four decades, has the murderer coming
Speaker 1: in the front door opened by Suzanne. Melanie has another
Speaker 1: take on it too.
Speaker 7: It makes me wonder what have we Has the investigation
Speaker 7: focused on the wrong person? Has it really been about
Speaker 7: Susan Bartlett rather than says Anne Armstrong? That's what I'm
Speaker 7: starting to wonder, you know, how many men were really there?
Speaker 7: Who is this tall man?
Speaker 1: And it also raises and brings into sharper focus what
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers has always maintained. At about two point thirty
Speaker 1: he heard a front door what he thought was a
Speaker 1: front door slam, then two car door slam and a
Speaker 1: car take off towards Smith Street.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, the timeframes seem to fit in. You wonder where
Speaker 7: we ever know?
Speaker 1: And I'm also just remembering on one of the occasions
Speaker 1: we've spoken before about this, that you just wishing you
Speaker 1: could go back and see her again, go back in time,
Speaker 1: and asked that question, why didn't you tell me? You know,
Speaker 1: when I was grown up? Why didn't you say anything?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that often. Why didn't I ask?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 7: That's probably too busy at living life, I guess. And
Speaker 7: you know, I do wonder how much mum Mum discussed
Speaker 7: it with An and maybe it was very very conscious
Speaker 7: decision on both their behalfs to you know, just keep
Speaker 7: it quiet because we don't see anybody hurt.
Speaker 1: Now. Police will only confirm that they spoke to her
Speaker 1: grandmother in February nineteen seventy eight, a year after the murders,
Speaker 1: and of course that raises another vexed question. If it
Speaker 1: was the first time they took her statement, did truth
Speaker 1: Scoop actually force their hand to finally interview her. For
Speaker 1: Melanie and her family, it certainly confirms their grandmother could
Speaker 1: have played a significant role in trying to solve the case,
Speaker 1: had she been taken seriously by investing Gators from the start.
Speaker 7: You know, we understand that memory can be distorted, but
Speaker 7: maybe Nana did no more than she led on and
Speaker 7: I think she just she was protecting everybody.
Speaker 1: As well as Gladys Coventry's interview and accompanying photographs, The
Speaker 1: Truth also published a photo of the service lane that
Speaker 1: separated the two houses, with a black arrow added to
Speaker 1: indicate the window from where she'd seen the man with
Speaker 1: sup And whenever Hugh Perry Jones is in that old lane,
Speaker 1: it's never far from his mind. So when you talk
Speaker 1: to missus Coventry, you were out here, your skip was here, ye,
Speaker 1: And what do you remember?
Speaker 6: Okay, Now that I look at the architecture, I believe
Speaker 6: her kitchen lean too started here and it was low
Speaker 6: on that wall. And that's why that window was the
Speaker 6: window that when she comes from the kitchen carrying her
Speaker 6: food or whatever. She can sit there at the little
Speaker 6: table in front of that window, which is as we
Speaker 6: see straight across for this window, which is not their kitchen,
Speaker 6: because the kitchen's back here, so that would have been
Speaker 6: a lounge and there it is, So.
Speaker 1: She would have been sitting there, and as she says
Speaker 1: in the Story and Truth.
Speaker 6: In the wee hours two am or whatever on a
Speaker 6: hot night, her back door would have only been six
Speaker 6: feet from the table, and she'd be getting the breeze
Speaker 6: in from the south yep.
Speaker 1: And because she's in the dark and they've got the
Speaker 1: lights on, she.
Speaker 6: Can see that, that's right, And otherwise the laneway is
Speaker 6: completely dark.
Speaker 1: And looking at this lane now, I mean in those
Speaker 1: days we're talking nearly fifty years ago, those gates weren't there.
Speaker 1: She was still at risk giving that interview that for truth,
Speaker 1: because as you look at this lane way, how easy
Speaker 1: it would have been for that guy to come back
Speaker 1: get over her little rickety fence.
Speaker 6: They're so close that, of course you know, the windows
Speaker 6: probably open too. She's probably because she's getting a breeze
Speaker 6: through and he could reach through and grab her before
Speaker 6: she could move doesn't bear thinking.
Speaker 1: About next time on the Easy Street murders.
Speaker 4: Those first initial thirty six forty eight hours are so important,
Speaker 4: but you've got to put yourself back in the time
Speaker 4: where it was. The tools that you had were a
Speaker 4: good old fashioned shoe leather, knock on doors, ask questions,
Speaker 4: assume nothing, believe no one, and check check checked,