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Speaker 1: Why were detectives so dismissive of witnesses so willing to

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Speaker 1: cooperate with their immediate investigation into the Easy Street murders.

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Speaker 1: Why didn't they insist on interviewing seventy two year old

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Speaker 1: ladders commentry straight away? And why not follow up with

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Speaker 1: Peter Seller's and has made ray for that matter as

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Speaker 1: soon as they could? And how hard would it have

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Speaker 1: been to cross the street to have a chat with

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Speaker 1: Christina For tourists with the hindsight of forty seven years especially,

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Speaker 1: it makes no sense. But the late Brian Murphy maintained

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Speaker 1: that the detectives seemed to have ignored.

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Speaker 2: What was right in front of them to be quite unserted.

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Speaker 2: I don't like to bag the blokes homicide squad. I've

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Speaker 2: already given the indecent pay. But fail you to search,

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Speaker 2: failure to find, and that's what the name of the

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Speaker 2: game is. And TIL encourage every person to speak to

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Speaker 2: and be nice to them, because you don't know how

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Speaker 2: you're going to use and you don't know what they're

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Speaker 2: going to tell you. People think that it's easy, but

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Speaker 2: most homicides are solved by the average policemen being told these.

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Speaker 1: The only possible explanation for this lack of attention to

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Speaker 1: detail is that not long after entering the house in Collingwood,

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Speaker 1: investigators believed they knew who committed the double homicide, and

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Speaker 1: so they disregarded pretty much everything else. Right from the start,

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Speaker 1: they had two serious suspects in their sites. The first

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Speaker 1: was Barry Woodard, who'd taken Susanne and young Gregory out

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Speaker 1: the weekend before. He told police that he and his

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Speaker 1: brother went into the house on the Wednesday night and

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Speaker 1: left the note under the ashtray in the kitchen because

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Speaker 1: he'd been concerned that he hadn't heard from her for

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Speaker 1: a couple of days. Obviously, this made him the first

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Speaker 1: person to look at The second was crime reporter John Grant.

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Speaker 1: Initially two the crime scene itself seemed to provide police

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Speaker 1: with useful evidence. The blood all through the house, the

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Speaker 1: note in the kitchen, the footprint on Susan Bartlett's bed cover. PETERH. Hiscock,

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Speaker 1: one of the first detectives to arrive at Easy Street,

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Speaker 1: recalls being confronted with a conflicting tableau. On the one hand,

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Speaker 1: there seemed to be much to work with. On the other,

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Speaker 1: they were already on the back foot.

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Speaker 3: Those first initial thirty six forty eight hours are so

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Speaker 3: important to investigators. But don't forget we'd lost three days.

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Speaker 3: And it's so easy for people to be criticizing or whatever.

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Speaker 3: But you've got to put yourself back in the time

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Speaker 3: where it was. Take your mind back, close your eyes

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Speaker 3: and think back. Oh, no mobile phones, no cameras, no

45
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Speaker 3: vic roads, lots and lots of things that you use.

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Speaker 3: Now people be tracked with their credit cards. So the

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Speaker 3: tools that you had were good old fashioned shoe leather,

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Speaker 3: knock on doors, ask questions and make observations. I mean,

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Speaker 3: we were taught the ABC, which is assume nothing, believe

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Speaker 3: no one or anything, and check, check, check. So that's

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Speaker 3: all we could do in those days.

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Speaker 1: So that's what he and Detective Graham McDonald tried to

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Speaker 1: do in Collingwood on January thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven. He

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Speaker 1: and his partner hit the streets check, check, checking, Rayam and.

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Speaker 3: I Sacksville easy kill. I can still remember. We were

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Speaker 3: up and down these three streets, knocking on doors. We

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Speaker 3: thought we could solve this one very quickly. Such a

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Speaker 3: horrific crime like that someone known. We thought something someone

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Speaker 3: was going to see something, someone would see something.

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Speaker 1: But nothing came from these door knocks. Yet there was

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Speaker 1: something inside the house that helped them quickly form a

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Speaker 1: view about possible suspects. Evidence of what the murderer did

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Speaker 1: after he'd killed Susan and Suzanne. The killer's blood in

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Speaker 1: the bathroom especially led them to believe that he knew

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Speaker 1: something about police procedure and was trying to get rid

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Speaker 1: of the women's blood from his own body and his clothes,

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Speaker 1: as well as clean himself up before leaving the house.

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Speaker 3: Never have I seen it, but to stand in a

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Speaker 3: bath and wash the blood down from such a horrific

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Speaker 3: crime was so so unusual to us. That person was

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Speaker 3: absolutely animal cunning to do that was just to cover

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Speaker 3: himself up, because he obviously was going to go somewhere

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Speaker 3: and he might be seen with all his blood on him.

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Speaker 3: So we got the old bath and pulled apart, and

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Speaker 3: in the elbow where the water drains out was fragments

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Speaker 3: of bone which had come off the knife or his clothing.

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Speaker 3: And I could not help thinking that this person knows

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Speaker 3: something about investigations. Now, it's not something that I would

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Speaker 3: have thought of. I'd have done that, but that time,

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Speaker 3: who knows what you think put yourself in that position,

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Speaker 3: but someone knew they had to remove the evidence from themselves.

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Speaker 3: I mean the perfect murder. You could say someone could

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Speaker 3: commit the perfect murder, then destroy all the clothing that

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Speaker 3: they were wearing, all the shoes, any all the evidence,

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Speaker 3: and then say nothing. It'd be very hard to get

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Speaker 3: home on those investigations in those days. And that's fitted

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Speaker 3: someone who writes about it thinks about it, attends murder

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Speaker 3: scenes had been near other murder scenes.

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Speaker 4: For PETERH.

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Speaker 1: Hiscock, this was a pretty good description of crime journal

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Speaker 1: John Grant, he wrote for Truth, consorted with crooks crimson

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Speaker 1: coppers on the tough old police rounds to get the

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Speaker 1: kind of yarns that Melbourne knocked the door down Tabloid demanded.

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Speaker 1: Nicknamed Grunter, his work was well known to the detectives

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Speaker 1: who descended on Easy Street that January morning in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy seven. What made them even more focused on the

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Speaker 1: fact that he'd slept on the couch next door was

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Speaker 1: that they knew it was the second time he was

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Speaker 1: so close to such a terrible crime, unbelievable as it

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Speaker 1: still seems. Just eighteen months earlier, Grant and two other

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Speaker 1: men had been with nineteen year old Julianne Garcius Slay

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Speaker 1: the night she disappeared from her apartment in North Melbourne.

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Speaker 1: The young American has never been seen since, nor has

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Speaker 1: body been found. For John Grant. It was an unlikely coincidence.

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Speaker 1: The detectives on the case couldn't ignore.

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Speaker 3: What we used to say, with these long, difficult investigations,

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Speaker 3: the answer is always in the file. However, it does

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Speaker 3: not seem to be in the file of this case.

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Speaker 3: I mean myself personally, I had probably one very good suspect.

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Speaker 3: He's been subject of DNA twice in the last several years.

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Speaker 5: This is John Grant, so he.

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Speaker 3: Was top of the list as far as me personally

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Speaker 3: was concerned.

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Speaker 1: Of course, he wasn't alone. Many of Peterhiscock's colleagues shared

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Speaker 1: the same view. Even though an official list of eight

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Speaker 1: suspects had been compiled by the homicide team for the

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Speaker 1: next twenty years, John Grant was widely believed to be

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Speaker 1: their chief person of interest. He always denied it, but

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Speaker 1: that never stopped his journalistic colleagues openly discussing it for years.

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Speaker 1: I know I was one of them, well, I didn't

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Speaker 1: know John at all. I remember those conversations in which

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Speaker 1: workmates would speculate about the sort of guy he was,

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Speaker 1: the work he did, that kind of thing. Many believed

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Speaker 1: it was just a question of time before he was arrested,

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Speaker 1: even if they, like me, didn't know anything much about

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Speaker 1: the case at all. Yet, someone who's always maintained John

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Speaker 1: Grant's lack of involvement is one of the two people

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Speaker 1: he was with the Knight of the Murders his former

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Speaker 1: colleague Alona Stevens. She respected him professionally and in a

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Speaker 1: way felt sorry for him.

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Speaker 4: He was actually quite a talented journalist. He was a

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Speaker 4: bit younger than me and we were just colleagues and

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Speaker 4: we all had a drink after work together. Just knew

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Speaker 4: him as a colleague. He was fun, he was driven

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Speaker 4: and dedicated. He was really good at crime. He could

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Speaker 4: get information for nothing out of nobody and make something

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Speaker 4: of it. He was a real disciple of the genre.

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Speaker 4: Whereas you know, we're always sports people just sat around

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Speaker 4: having a good time, he was actually out there doing

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Speaker 4: a real job.

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Speaker 1: Alona left work with a group of colleagues, including Grant,

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Speaker 1: that Monday afternoon in January nineteen seventy seven and went

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Speaker 1: for a drink at the Celtic Club, a favorite journo's

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Speaker 1: haunt at the time.

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Speaker 4: Well, we'd all gone for a bit of a drink,

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Speaker 4: as was our habit, and because he had no car,

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Speaker 4: I had my car. We'd all been having a good time,

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Speaker 4: and I said, look, why don't you just crash at

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Speaker 4: my place? I didn't live far away, so he came

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Speaker 4: home with me. We had a couple more drinks, waited

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Speaker 4: for my flatmate to come home. She and her partner

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Speaker 4: had a restaurant, so late in the night, made a

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Speaker 4: bit up for him on the couch and off we

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Speaker 4: all went to bed.

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Speaker 1: You made a bet up for him on the couch?

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Speaker 1: Why because he was a bit pissed.

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Speaker 4: Well, he was pissed. And secondly, it was only a

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Speaker 4: two bedroom house, so I had my room, Janet had

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Speaker 4: her room, and he had to sleep on the couch.

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Speaker 1: No, I just wondered that you were worried about him

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Speaker 1: going home.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean it was way too late. I'm

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Speaker 4: not sure that him the trains would have been running then,

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Speaker 4: so I just said, look, stay here and we'll figure

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Speaker 4: it out in the morning.

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Speaker 1: So sorry, just again, what time was it.

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Speaker 4: Oh, it was late at night, early morning. Yeah, late night,

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Speaker 4: early morning.

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Speaker 1: What happens then? Do you remember anything from that night?

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Speaker 1: He just slept through the night.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. We all just got up in the morning, one, two, three,

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Speaker 4: into the in and out of the bathroom and off

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Speaker 4: we went. It was perfectly normal. He was still on

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Speaker 4: the couch when I got up. Janet was always a

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Speaker 4: late riser because she worked really hard in the restaurant.

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Speaker 4: Do you remember what time he did get up? No,

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Speaker 4: sorry I don't, but it would have been normal.

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Speaker 1: And what was his demeanor when he woke up? When

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Speaker 1: you got him up and got him moving because you

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Speaker 1: ended up taking him home.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, he had a headache, like like me, so you know,

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Speaker 4: his demeanor was, well, I better get home now, as

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Speaker 4: we know.

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Speaker 1: Two days after driving him home that Tuesday morning, Alona

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Speaker 1: found Susan and Suzanne's bodies in the house next door.

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Speaker 1: She's still astonished that so many people regarded John Grant

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Speaker 1: as a suspect in the double homicide.

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Speaker 4: I was absolutely flabbagasted because for starters that I mean,

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Speaker 4: they didn't never ask me about him, but you know,

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Speaker 4: and I knew where he'd been. I mean, okay, I

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Speaker 4: hadn't been beside him all night, but blind Freddie could

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Speaker 4: have seen that there was no evidence to support that

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Speaker 4: he had done anything.

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Speaker 1: Did you ever talk to him about it?

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Speaker 4: No, not that I recall, because there was you know,

196
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Speaker 4: it was pretty intense at the time, and I left

197
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Speaker 4: the truth shortly after that to go to the age

198
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Speaker 4: to work, and I really never spoke to him again

199
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Speaker 4: because he had a crime beat and I was in Sport.

200
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Speaker 4: I guess we just all moved on with our lives

201
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Speaker 4: and he must have known he wasn't guilty. I knew

202
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Speaker 4: he wasn't guilty, so we didn't pursue it.

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Speaker 1: Did you ever look at him differently after that?

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Speaker 3: No?

205
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Speaker 4: I always really felt rather bad because I mean, what

206
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Speaker 4: are the odds that this is going to happen to you?

207
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Speaker 4: You know, I don't good and hold an opinion on

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Speaker 4: what happened to the young girl in North Melbourne, but this,

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Speaker 4: to have this happen eighteen months later must have been

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Speaker 4: the most terrible thing for him to actually live with,

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Speaker 4: to actually have to have to bear, plus all the

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Speaker 4: staring and the finger pointing and the police harassing it

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Speaker 4: well as good as harassing him. I think he's had

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Speaker 4: a really raw deal and had a lot of bad luck.

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Speaker 1: For the record, John Grant declined to be interviewed for

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Speaker 1: this podcast, just as he did when I was writing

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Speaker 1: the book about the case. Andrew Rule was also a

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Speaker 1: young reporter back in those days, now one of Australia's

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Speaker 1: most prolific crime journalists and successful authors. He remembers Grant

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Speaker 1: well and had a pertinent conversation about him with a

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Speaker 1: homicide veteran.

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Speaker 5: I had this conversation with a former head of the

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Speaker 5: homicide squad, probably twenty five or thirty years ago, and

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Speaker 5: when Eezy Street was already a big and soft case,

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Speaker 5: and it might have been in the late eighties that

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Speaker 5: I had this conversation and this homicide man, former head

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Speaker 5: of the squad, he said, yeah, I can see why

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Speaker 5: everybody thought it was John Grant, a truth journalist for

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Speaker 5: various reasons. He said, we did too, and let me

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Speaker 5: tell you. We got him into Russell Street and we

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Speaker 5: had him in there for I think he said twenty

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Speaker 5: four hours, but you know, all day and all night

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Speaker 5: or something. And he, without giving me details, he led

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Speaker 5: me to believe that he was interrogated very thoroughly and

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Speaker 5: that clearly he didn't know any more than he told them.

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Speaker 5: He was a knock about journo certainly was he ran.

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Speaker 5: When you work for truth, you had to mix with

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Speaker 5: coppers and crooks and all sorts of colorful people because

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Speaker 5: that was where you got your stories. A lot of

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Speaker 5: journals do that, including me, so you wouldn't automatically hang

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Speaker 5: him for that. But he was a hard edged truth

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Speaker 5: crime reporter. He did knock around with some very hard people.

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Speaker 5: And as you know, and some people know, he had

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Speaker 5: the bad luck to be involved with a couple of

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Speaker 5: guys who were the last to see alive. A young

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Speaker 5: woman who vanished in Melbourne earlier before Easy Street, and

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Speaker 5: that is the mysterious case of Julie Garcia Slay. Julie

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Speaker 5: Garcia Lay came from I think California. She was an

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Speaker 5: American citizen. She came to Australia, very young woman, probably nineteen.

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Speaker 5: She's come out here. She's working at the Australian Newspaper,

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Speaker 5: which was then in the same building as Truth up

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Speaker 5: in La Trope Street. And she was known for that

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Speaker 5: reason too, people like John Grandain, many other journals, and

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Speaker 5: she happened, you know, she was invited on a Friday

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Speaker 5: night or whatever, to a party or a drink or

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Speaker 5: whatever with a few people, and the last to see

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Speaker 5: her alive, it would appear, were a couple of very

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Speaker 5: bad citizens, one being John Joseph Powell and by chance,

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Speaker 5: John Grant. Now this coincidence is probably the thing, and

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Speaker 5: it probably is a coincidence. This is probably what has

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Speaker 5: focused the police's attention on John Grant so thoroughly. It

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Speaker 5: just makes all of us think, Gee, that's a long,

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Speaker 5: difficult coincidence. But there's never been a scaeric of evidence

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Speaker 5: against him. You can be unlucky if you're mixing certain circles,

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Speaker 5: and John Grant certainly ran in those circles.

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Speaker 1: Peter Hiscock still shakes his head at this particular happenstance,

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Speaker 1: but he's come to terms with what Grant always maintained.

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Speaker 1: He wasn't the killer.

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Speaker 3: I have to believe John Grant absolutely extraordinary. But again,

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Speaker 3: you could have a whiteboard sometimes of investigations where because

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Speaker 3: something looks to be unusual doesn't mean to say that

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Speaker 3: it is so that looked unusual. All those things led

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Speaker 3: in one direction. But of course, again he would have

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Speaker 3: been delighted that DNA had been invented. He'd be delighted

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Speaker 3: that had been upgraded and he's been cleared. But if

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Speaker 3: you had a whiteboard and we had forty experienced people

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Speaker 3: down in a classroom looking at this, I guarantee you

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Speaker 3: that most people would have pointed with all those points

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Speaker 3: I was pointing out to you, and there's other things

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Speaker 3: that I'm not going to go into, but you would

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Speaker 3: have said, right, it's guying. Might be the person we

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Speaker 3: need to look at.

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Speaker 1: Barry Woodard, one of the two men who entered the

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Speaker 1: murder house the night before the women's bodies were discovered,

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Speaker 1: was the other suspect on the homicide team's initial list,

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Speaker 1: but he didn't have to wait so long to be cleared.

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Speaker 1: Police quickly accepted the then thirty one year old sheerer's

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Speaker 1: alibi and his insistence that he and his brother hadn't

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Speaker 1: noticed anything wrong when they visited one four seven Easy

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Speaker 1: Street and left a note for Suzanne. Woodard also declined

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Speaker 1: to talk with me when I was writing Murder on

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Speaker 1: Easy Street, and did so again recently when I rang

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Speaker 1: to let him know I was working on this podcast.

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Speaker 1: But let's not forget that while the Woodard brothers were

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Speaker 1: in the house, on Wednesday night, January twelfth, a new

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Speaker 1: friend of Susan's had already climbed in through her bedroom

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Speaker 1: window via the service lane.

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Speaker 3: The night before, one of the fellows who just met

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Speaker 3: them climbed in as a footprint that was on the bed,

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Speaker 3: and they got in. Been trying to ring the girls

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Speaker 3: and thought they might add the wrong number, and then

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Speaker 3: set they climbed back out once they checked the number.

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Speaker 3: Now you only had to turn your head to look

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Speaker 3: down there, and you'd see what was their human nature?

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Speaker 5: Can look around.

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Speaker 3: I've been trying to ring these girls. I want to

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Speaker 3: get hold you're just going to go and check the

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Speaker 3: number and not so if they're there. Also the young

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Speaker 3: Gregor who's still there. Whether he's winpling or whatever, we

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Speaker 3: won't ever know. But I mean he's certainly had no food,

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Speaker 3: He never had any drink, He had nothing, His nappies

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Speaker 3: were soiled, his bed, all that sort of stuff. To

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Speaker 3: this day, I don't believe this guy. I didn't believe

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Speaker 3: him then, I don't believe him. Now you've gone in there,

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Speaker 3: Well you've actually gone in through a window which has

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Speaker 3: sort of broken in, climbed in over it's bed and

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Speaker 3: gone looked at the phone number and not look back.

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Speaker 3: We thought we're going to solve this pretty quickly, but.

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Speaker 2: No, huh.

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Speaker 1: He's never been named publicly, but he was a tobacco

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Speaker 1: salesman and, as Peter Hiscock says, went round to the

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Speaker 1: house after the phone kept ringing out on the numerous

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Speaker 1: times he tried to call Susan. Fortunately he had a

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Speaker 1: friend with him who led him up through the window.

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Speaker 1: He also went straight to police when he saw the

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Speaker 1: double homicide reported in the Herald on Thursday afternoon, January thirteen.

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Speaker 1: They clearly believed he had nothing crucial to add in

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Speaker 1: terms of detail. He was even allowed to leave the

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Speaker 1: country before the coroner's inquest into the murders on July twelve,

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven. But somehow, nearly fifty years later, the

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Speaker 1: fact that three men entered the house where two women's

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Speaker 1: bodies lay seems even harder to grasp. Can we really

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Speaker 1: believe that this first visitor walked through Susan's unlit bedroom

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Speaker 1: into the hall, turned right and right again to enter

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Speaker 1: the laundroom to check the phone on the wall without

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Speaker 1: seeing her. Perhaps harder to imagine is this guy walking

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Speaker 1: back into the corridor to retrace his steps out of

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Speaker 1: the house through her bedroom window. This means that for

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Speaker 1: a few seconds at least he was facing Susan on

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Speaker 1: the floor at the other end of that corridor, and

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Speaker 1: was also close to the next bedroom, where sixteen month

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Speaker 1: old greg Armstrong was in his cot Could he really

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Speaker 1: not see Susan's body so close to the front door

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Speaker 1: or hear Gregory. Had he seen her and called police,

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Speaker 1: significant time would have been saved. The young women had

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Speaker 1: been killed the night before, so police would have had

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Speaker 1: more to work with, but as it was, they weren't

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Speaker 1: found until Thursday morning, so that crucial forty eight hour

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Speaker 1: window had closed. This still drives Peterhiscott quietly crazy, as

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Speaker 1: does the fact that an ex police officer was also

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Speaker 1: on the original list of suspects.

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Speaker 3: I'm not going to name him. He was an ex

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Speaker 3: policeman who had left the police force under a check

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Speaker 3: and a situation involving women. Was not charged, but giving

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Speaker 3: the opportunity in those days to leave, and.

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Speaker 1: He did raping women, not quite but harassment.

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Speaker 3: I think probably I haven't got evid of that, but

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Speaker 3: that was allegations. So anyway, he was a plumber working

359
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Speaker 3: on a roof not far away. He would have seen

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Speaker 3: Susan Armstrong was an attractive young lady, and as time

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Speaker 3: went on, I think, well, this guy would be just

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Speaker 3: the sort of guy he had the propensity to put

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Speaker 3: to females. If I don't book you, I'll come around

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Speaker 3: to you. That resonated in my mind and bubbled away.

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Speaker 3: When the million dollar reward came out. I got back

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Speaker 3: to Hounsld. Mick Hughes, the boss there. They looked out

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Speaker 3: and they said, no, he's been eliminated again from DNA.

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Speaker 3: Can't tell me, said he's been eliminated. Now after that,

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Speaker 3: I've got nobody else.

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Speaker 1: Over the next year or so, as the case detectives

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Speaker 1: have been so hopeful of slving quickly remained unsolved, they

372
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:05,440
Speaker 1: developed that list of eight official suspects. It's never been

373
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Speaker 1: released publicly, but it's not hard to work out who

374
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Speaker 1: The first four on it were John Grant, the Woodard brothers,

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Speaker 1: and the tobacco salesman. Then there was the disgraced form

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Speaker 1: of police officer, a so called champion sportsman eventually identified

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Speaker 1: as a racing car driver, and another man detectives tracked

378
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Speaker 1: down in Britain. The final person of interest in this

379
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Speaker 1: inauspicious group was a man who hailed from Country Victoria,

380
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Speaker 1: specifically the Euroa Banella region, so he was known to

381
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Speaker 1: both the Armstrong and Bartlett families. In fact, early on,

382
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Speaker 1: Sue's brother Martin and Suzanne's sister Gail told police he

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Speaker 1: could be involved. He'd gone out with Suzanne several years

384
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Speaker 1: before she traveled overseas, was known to country police, and

385
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Speaker 1: had been in Melbourne when the girls were killed. His

386
00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:57,439
Speaker 1: wife told me that a couple of days before their deaths,

387
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Speaker 1: he and a friend had started drinking quote and he

388
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Speaker 1: was getting angry unquote at his home in northern Victoria.

389
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Speaker 1: She said she left their house and drove to her

390
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Speaker 1: parents place as fast as she could get the kids

391
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Speaker 1: in the car. By Monday, January tenth, her husband was

392
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Speaker 1: reportedly drinking at a pub in Collingwood, a few blocks

393
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Speaker 1: away from Easy Street. His so called mistress at the

394
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Speaker 1: time told Polis he was with her all that night

395
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Speaker 1: in Fitzroy, a suburb away. When his wife and I

396
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Speaker 1: spoke in twenty seventeen, she was long separated from this man.

397
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Speaker 1: She wasn't sure he could have done something so violent

398
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Speaker 1: as murder, but claimed he'd beaten her up before, and

399
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Speaker 1: so she knew what he was capable of when he

400
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Speaker 1: was drunk. But DNA testing cleared him of the crime,

401
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:45,440
Speaker 1: as it did all eight men on Homicide's initial list

402
00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:49,679
Speaker 1: of eight persons of interest. This meant they were effectively

403
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Speaker 1: back to where they started when they first walked into

404
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Speaker 1: one four seven Easy Street, horrified by what had happened,

405
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Speaker 1: but with no clear next step and no real suspect

406
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Speaker 1: to follow. This doesn't surprise Andrew Rule, senior columnist and

407
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Speaker 1: presenter of the Life and Crimes podcast with The Herald's son.

408
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Speaker 1: He clearly recalls what the police force was like back

409
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Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen seventies.

410
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Speaker 5: He was composed largely of not really well educated or

411
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Speaker 5: very sophisticated men who had joined the police force, probably

412
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Speaker 5: fairly young. Their values and attitudes were shaped at the

413
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Speaker 5: front bar and the footy club more than anywhere else,

414
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Speaker 5: and are probably lagging behind some elements of society in

415
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Speaker 5: their attitudes. And all of that meant that when you

416
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Speaker 5: had two young women in a house in Collingwood who

417
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Speaker 5: had a lot of male visitors and the whole sort

418
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Speaker 5: of permissive age thing, there would be a total tendency

419
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Speaker 5: by a lot of those people to regard the victims

420
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Speaker 5: as sort of or maybe second rate or not worthy

421
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Speaker 5: of as consideration as if it was the governor's wife

422
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Speaker 5: and daughter. Well, that'd be much more serious, mind you.

423
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Speaker 5: That's human nature that applies today. That still exists because

424
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 5: we're human and that's the way we operate. But it

425
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Speaker 5: was more pronounced then than it is today, I think,

426
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Speaker 5: and those young women, the tragedy of what happened to them,

427
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Speaker 5: the poor investigation that followed, is reflected by the fact

428
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Speaker 5: that I think there's only something like about twenty four

429
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 5: sheets of paper in the file. I know that various

430
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 5: homicide detected since modern day ones have expressed to me

431
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 5: privately their shock when they looked at the Easy Street

432
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Speaker 5: file that it only had basically a few sheets of paper.

433
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Speaker 5: It was a Manila folder with a few sheets of paper.

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Speaker 1: Twenty four pages of information in the original file certainly

435
00:25:55,960 --> 00:26:00,359
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a solid, thorough investigation. And when I

436
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: looked at the official file from the coroner's office in

437
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, it reflected this. Inside a yellowing jacket, copies

438
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,679
Speaker 1: of witness statements looked like they'd been rifled through too

439
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: many times. By untrained hands over the decades. Some pages

440
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:18,120
Speaker 1: had been shuffled together without any regard for proper sequence

441
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 1: or even whether they fitted together. Maybe this archival disarray

442
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:25,040
Speaker 1: was due to the file having been part of the

443
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:28,959
Speaker 1: public record for so many years, but most disturbing were

444
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: the photos of Susan and Suzanne's bodies included in this

445
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 1: crime dossier. They deserve better. When high profile detective Ron

446
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: Iddalls became head of Victoria's first properly staff cold case

447
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,360
Speaker 1: unit in twenty eleven, he tried to bring new dignity

448
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: as well as scrutiny to bear on the case. He

449
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,240
Speaker 1: sifted through two hundred and eighty unsolved murders on the

450
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: book since nineteen fifty and green lighted those he felt

451
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 1: they could probably solve. This included easy street colour coated green.

452
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: Due to the fact that there was DNA to work with,

453
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 1: all eight persons of interest on the original list were retested.

454
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,639
Speaker 1: Whether this was because of advances in DNA technology or

455
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: problems with the first tests has never been made clear

456
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:17,679
Speaker 1: by police, but some thirty five people were DNA tested

457
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: in total at that point, including the first eight, but

458
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: there were no DNA matches for the seminal stains found

459
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: on the carpet near Suzanne's body, let alone a face

460
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 1: washer found away from the house by forensic scientist Henry

461
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: Huggins the day after he first visited the crime scene.

462
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: This intrepid investigator went back and checked the manhole and

463
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: road rains within two blocks of the house and amazingly

464
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:47,400
Speaker 1: found the washer, as well as a shawl. It's hard

465
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 1: to know if the face washer was used for DNA testing,

466
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 1: given where it was found, it might have been too

467
00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: contaminated to be useful. Certainly, not much was made of

468
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:00,479
Speaker 1: Henry Huggins's remarkable find or most of the exhibit items

469
00:28:00,520 --> 00:28:04,960
Speaker 1: taken from the house. According to the coronial file, These

470
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: included a bloodstained tawel, scrapings from the passage wall, bed sheets,

471
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:13,160
Speaker 1: a pair of panties, a clock, fibers from a high chair,

472
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: scrapings from the side of the bath, and two pieces

473
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 1: of carpet. Blood, hair, and nails were also taken from

474
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 1: Sue and Suzanne, but apparently revealed no useful information. The

475
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: exhibit that mattered most was that small piece of carpet

476
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,439
Speaker 1: cut away from where Suzanne had lain, stained with seamen.

477
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 1: For all of us riveted by TV dramas like Cold

478
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 1: Case and CSI. DNA is supposed to be infallible forensically

479
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 1: the key that unlocks that last door. The bad guys,

480
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 1: especially the really bad guys, aren't supposed to be able

481
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: to evade its forensic reach. In the end, this lies

482
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: at the heart of the mystery surrounding this dreadful double murder.

483
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: Has science somehow got it wrong.

484
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 5: The police DNA sample is of seamen found in or

485
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 5: around Sue Armstrong's body. The assumption has always been naturally

486
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 5: that this would probably be the killer, That the killer

487
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 5: is a sort of a rapist sex killer. Right, fair assumption.

488
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 5: But what if it's wrong. What if the previous visitor

489
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 5: who turned up at you know, eight thirty whatever and

490
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 5: left at eight fifty five or nine fifteen. What if

491
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 5: it's his semen and that the killer is actually the

492
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 5: jealous bloke who turns up a few minutes later. That

493
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 5: would turn this whole case upside down, because it means

494
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:43,920
Speaker 5: that the DNA samples are relevant because it's the wrong guy.

495
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 5: That would be an explanation. I'm not saying it's totally likely,

496
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 5: but it fits the facts.

497
00:29:55,240 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: Next time on the Easy Street murders, DNA is it's

498
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: a living thing.

499
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:03,960
Speaker 4: It didn't seem to be clear at the time about

500
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 4: how deep the wounds were, how they actually died. It's

501
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 4: not something that lives on forever, and the savagery of

502
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 4: it looks like it's something that's been planned