WEBVTT - What Detectives Thought They Knew 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.760 Why were detectives so dismissive of witnesses so willing to 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:09.320 cooperate with their immediate investigation into the Easy Street murders. 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:12.520 Why didn't they insist on interviewing seventy two year old 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.119 ladders commentry straight away? And why not follow up with 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.280 Peter Seller's and has made ray for that matter as 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.599 soon as they could? And how hard would it have 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:24.479 been to cross the street to have a chat with 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:29.320 Christina For tourists with the hindsight of forty seven years especially, 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.760 it makes no sense. But the late Brian Murphy maintained 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.440 that the detectives seemed to have ignored. 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.599 What was right in front of them to be quite unserted. 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.000 I don't like to bag the blokes homicide squad. I've 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:47.560 already given the indecent pay. But fail you to search, 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.360 failure to find, and that's what the name of the 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:56.080 game is. And TIL encourage every person to speak to 0:00:56.800 --> 0:00:59.279 and be nice to them, because you don't know how 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.400 you're going to use and you don't know what they're 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.800 going to tell you. People think that it's easy, but 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:13.679 most homicides are solved by the average policemen being told these. 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:17.120 The only possible explanation for this lack of attention to 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.280 detail is that not long after entering the house in Collingwood, 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.560 investigators believed they knew who committed the double homicide, and 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:57.120 so they disregarded pretty much everything else. Right from the start, 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.600 they had two serious suspects in their sites. The first 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.120 was Barry Woodard, who'd taken Susanne and young Gregory out 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:07.400 the weekend before. He told police that he and his 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:09.799 brother went into the house on the Wednesday night and 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.760 left the note under the ashtray in the kitchen because 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:14.919 he'd been concerned that he hadn't heard from her for 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.960 a couple of days. Obviously, this made him the first 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:24.040 person to look at The second was crime reporter John Grant. 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.000 Initially two the crime scene itself seemed to provide police 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.760 with useful evidence. The blood all through the house, the 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:37.280 note in the kitchen, the footprint on Susan Bartlett's bed cover. PETERH. Hiscock, 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:39.760 one of the first detectives to arrive at Easy Street, 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:44.959 recalls being confronted with a conflicting tableau. On the one hand, 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.680 there seemed to be much to work with. On the other, 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:49.960 they were already on the back foot. 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.400 Those first initial thirty six forty eight hours are so 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.440 important to investigators. But don't forget we'd lost three days. 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:04.919 And it's so easy for people to be criticizing or whatever. 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:07.240 But you've got to put yourself back in the time 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.720 where it was. Take your mind back, close your eyes 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:16.959 and think back. Oh, no mobile phones, no cameras, no 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:20.280 vic roads, lots and lots of things that you use. 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:25.079 Now people be tracked with their credit cards. So the 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.480 tools that you had were good old fashioned shoe leather, 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.639 knock on doors, ask questions and make observations. I mean, 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:40.520 we were taught the ABC, which is assume nothing, believe 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:45.440 no one or anything, and check, check, check. So that's 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:46.880 all we could do in those days. 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.240 So that's what he and Detective Graham McDonald tried to 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.360 do in Collingwood on January thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven. He 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.680 and his partner hit the streets check, check, checking, Rayam and. 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.640 I Sacksville easy kill. I can still remember. We were 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:05.720 up and down these three streets, knocking on doors. We 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:08.800 thought we could solve this one very quickly. Such a 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.480 horrific crime like that someone known. We thought something someone 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.280 was going to see something, someone would see something. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.520 But nothing came from these door knocks. Yet there was 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.960 something inside the house that helped them quickly form a 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.360 view about possible suspects. Evidence of what the murderer did 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.320 after he'd killed Susan and Suzanne. The killer's blood in 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.599 the bathroom especially led them to believe that he knew 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:35.240 something about police procedure and was trying to get rid 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:37.760 of the women's blood from his own body and his clothes, 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.479 as well as clean himself up before leaving the house. 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.960 Never have I seen it, but to stand in a 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:50.200 bath and wash the blood down from such a horrific 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:57.400 crime was so so unusual to us. That person was 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.440 absolutely animal cunning to do that was just to cover 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:04.000 himself up, because he obviously was going to go somewhere 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:06.720 and he might be seen with all his blood on him. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:11.280 So we got the old bath and pulled apart, and 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:18.160 in the elbow where the water drains out was fragments 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:23.520 of bone which had come off the knife or his clothing. 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.520 And I could not help thinking that this person knows 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.840 something about investigations. Now, it's not something that I would 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.640 have thought of. I'd have done that, but that time, 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.279 who knows what you think put yourself in that position, 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:41.520 but someone knew they had to remove the evidence from themselves. 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:45.839 I mean the perfect murder. You could say someone could 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:48.160 commit the perfect murder, then destroy all the clothing that 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.360 they were wearing, all the shoes, any all the evidence, 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:56.040 and then say nothing. It'd be very hard to get 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.240 home on those investigations in those days. And that's fitted 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:06.520 someone who writes about it thinks about it, attends murder 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.599 scenes had been near other murder scenes. 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:13.440 For PETERH. 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:16.320 Hiscock, this was a pretty good description of crime journal 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.599 John Grant, he wrote for Truth, consorted with crooks crimson 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.360 coppers on the tough old police rounds to get the 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.560 kind of yarns that Melbourne knocked the door down Tabloid demanded. 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.919 Nicknamed Grunter, his work was well known to the detectives 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:33.560 who descended on Easy Street that January morning in nineteen 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.120 seventy seven. What made them even more focused on the 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.560 fact that he'd slept on the couch next door was 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:41.640 that they knew it was the second time he was 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:46.720 so close to such a terrible crime, unbelievable as it 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:49.960 still seems. Just eighteen months earlier, Grant and two other 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.240 men had been with nineteen year old Julianne Garcius Slay 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.359 the night she disappeared from her apartment in North Melbourne. 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.840 The young American has never been seen since, nor has 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:05.280 body been found. For John Grant. It was an unlikely coincidence. 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:07.919 The detectives on the case couldn't ignore. 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:13.640 What we used to say, with these long, difficult investigations, 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:17.720 the answer is always in the file. However, it does 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:19.760 not seem to be in the file of this case. 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:25.600 I mean myself personally, I had probably one very good suspect. 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:31.480 He's been subject of DNA twice in the last several years. 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:34.240 This is John Grant, so he. 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.120 Was top of the list as far as me personally 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:38.720 was concerned. 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.440 Of course, he wasn't alone. Many of Peterhiscock's colleagues shared 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.560 the same view. Even though an official list of eight 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.280 suspects had been compiled by the homicide team for the 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:52.400 next twenty years, John Grant was widely believed to be 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:56.920 their chief person of interest. He always denied it, but 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.520 that never stopped his journalistic colleagues openly discussing it for years. 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:04.960 I know I was one of them, well, I didn't 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:07.760 know John at all. I remember those conversations in which 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.320 workmates would speculate about the sort of guy he was, 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:15.040 the work he did, that kind of thing. Many believed 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.720 it was just a question of time before he was arrested, 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.320 even if they, like me, didn't know anything much about 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.920 the case at all. Yet, someone who's always maintained John 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.679 Grant's lack of involvement is one of the two people 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.160 he was with the Knight of the Murders his former 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:36.400 colleague Alona Stevens. She respected him professionally and in a 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:37.880 way felt sorry for him. 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:43.920 He was actually quite a talented journalist. He was a 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.280 bit younger than me and we were just colleagues and 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.760 we all had a drink after work together. Just knew 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.800 him as a colleague. He was fun, he was driven 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:55.880 and dedicated. He was really good at crime. He could 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.640 get information for nothing out of nobody and make something 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.200 of it. He was a real disciple of the genre. 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:05.880 Whereas you know, we're always sports people just sat around 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.880 having a good time, he was actually out there doing 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:09.880 a real job. 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.360 Alona left work with a group of colleagues, including Grant, 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.480 that Monday afternoon in January nineteen seventy seven and went 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.160 for a drink at the Celtic Club, a favorite journo's 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:22.000 haunt at the time. 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.240 Well, we'd all gone for a bit of a drink, 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.480 as was our habit, and because he had no car, 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.800 I had my car. We'd all been having a good time, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:33.880 and I said, look, why don't you just crash at 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.800 my place? I didn't live far away, so he came 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.040 home with me. We had a couple more drinks, waited 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:42.439 for my flatmate to come home. She and her partner 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.360 had a restaurant, so late in the night, made a 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:47.199 bit up for him on the couch and off we 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:47.920 all went to bed. 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:49.680 You made a bet up for him on the couch? 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:51.360 Why because he was a bit pissed. 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:53.920 Well, he was pissed. And secondly, it was only a 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.160 two bedroom house, so I had my room, Janet had 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.560 her room, and he had to sleep on the couch. 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:00.679 No, I just wondered that you were worried about him 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:01.080 going home. 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.600 Oh yeah, I mean it was way too late. I'm 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:05.520 not sure that him the trains would have been running then, 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.280 so I just said, look, stay here and we'll figure 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:08.880 it out in the morning. 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:10.360 So sorry, just again, what time was it. 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:15.040 Oh, it was late at night, early morning. Yeah, late night, 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:15.600 early morning. 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.720 What happens then? Do you remember anything from that night? 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:20.199 He just slept through the night. 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.240 Yeah. We all just got up in the morning, one, two, three, 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:24.760 into the in and out of the bathroom and off 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:27.640 we went. It was perfectly normal. He was still on 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.920 the couch when I got up. Janet was always a 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:33.079 late riser because she worked really hard in the restaurant. 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:35.439 Do you remember what time he did get up? No, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:37.959 sorry I don't, but it would have been normal. 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:40.480 And what was his demeanor when he woke up? When 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.319 you got him up and got him moving because you 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:44.400 ended up taking him home. 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:49.800 Yeah, he had a headache, like like me, so you know, 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:59.319 his demeanor was, well, I better get home now, as 0:10:59.360 --> 0:10:59.599 we know. 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.400 Two days after driving him home that Tuesday morning, Alona 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.120 found Susan and Suzanne's bodies in the house next door. 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.760 She's still astonished that so many people regarded John Grant 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:12.959 as a suspect in the double homicide. 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:19.400 I was absolutely flabbagasted because for starters that I mean, 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.520 they didn't never ask me about him, but you know, 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:24.800 and I knew where he'd been. I mean, okay, I 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.280 hadn't been beside him all night, but blind Freddie could 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:30.800 have seen that there was no evidence to support that 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:31.680 he had done anything. 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:33.120 Did you ever talk to him about it? 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:37.040 No, not that I recall, because there was you know, 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.280 it was pretty intense at the time, and I left 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.280 the truth shortly after that to go to the age 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:45.960 to work, and I really never spoke to him again 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.199 because he had a crime beat and I was in Sport. 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:50.400 I guess we just all moved on with our lives 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:52.680 and he must have known he wasn't guilty. I knew 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:54.400 he wasn't guilty, so we didn't pursue it. 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:57.559 Did you ever look at him differently after that? 0:11:57.960 --> 0:11:58.000 No? 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:01.679 I always really felt rather bad because I mean, what 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:03.880 are the odds that this is going to happen to you? 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:06.800 You know, I don't good and hold an opinion on 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:10.319 what happened to the young girl in North Melbourne, but this, 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:12.640 to have this happen eighteen months later must have been 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:15.160 the most terrible thing for him to actually live with, 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:17.839 to actually have to have to bear, plus all the 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.839 staring and the finger pointing and the police harassing it 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:22.959 well as good as harassing him. I think he's had 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.840 a really raw deal and had a lot of bad luck. 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.280 For the record, John Grant declined to be interviewed for 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.960 this podcast, just as he did when I was writing 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:36.719 the book about the case. Andrew Rule was also a 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:39.840 young reporter back in those days, now one of Australia's 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:44.080 most prolific crime journalists and successful authors. He remembers Grant 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.480 well and had a pertinent conversation about him with a 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:48.400 homicide veteran. 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:52.839 I had this conversation with a former head of the 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:57.319 homicide squad, probably twenty five or thirty years ago, and 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.720 when Eezy Street was already a big and soft case, 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.439 and it might have been in the late eighties that 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:09.480 I had this conversation and this homicide man, former head 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.040 of the squad, he said, yeah, I can see why 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:16.079 everybody thought it was John Grant, a truth journalist for 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.959 various reasons. He said, we did too, and let me 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.439 tell you. We got him into Russell Street and we 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.880 had him in there for I think he said twenty 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.040 four hours, but you know, all day and all night 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.959 or something. And he, without giving me details, he led 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:34.480 me to believe that he was interrogated very thoroughly and 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.959 that clearly he didn't know any more than he told them. 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.679 He was a knock about journo certainly was he ran. 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.880 When you work for truth, you had to mix with 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:51.160 coppers and crooks and all sorts of colorful people because 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:53.599 that was where you got your stories. A lot of 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:58.480 journals do that, including me, so you wouldn't automatically hang 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.600 him for that. But he was a hard edged truth 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.520 crime reporter. He did knock around with some very hard people. 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:11.400 And as you know, and some people know, he had 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.400 the bad luck to be involved with a couple of 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.840 guys who were the last to see alive. A young 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:23.280 woman who vanished in Melbourne earlier before Easy Street, and 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:27.640 that is the mysterious case of Julie Garcia Slay. Julie 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.800 Garcia Lay came from I think California. She was an 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:35.000 American citizen. She came to Australia, very young woman, probably nineteen. 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.560 She's come out here. She's working at the Australian Newspaper, 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.240 which was then in the same building as Truth up 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.880 in La Trope Street. And she was known for that 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:50.120 reason too, people like John Grandain, many other journals, and 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:53.280 she happened, you know, she was invited on a Friday 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.040 night or whatever, to a party or a drink or 0:14:56.120 --> 0:15:00.440 whatever with a few people, and the last to see 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.520 her alive, it would appear, were a couple of very 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:08.280 bad citizens, one being John Joseph Powell and by chance, 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:12.480 John Grant. Now this coincidence is probably the thing, and 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.640 it probably is a coincidence. This is probably what has 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.240 focused the police's attention on John Grant so thoroughly. It 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:23.920 just makes all of us think, Gee, that's a long, 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:29.360 difficult coincidence. But there's never been a scaeric of evidence 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:34.200 against him. You can be unlucky if you're mixing certain circles, 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.160 and John Grant certainly ran in those circles. 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.520 Peter Hiscock still shakes his head at this particular happenstance, 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.360 but he's come to terms with what Grant always maintained. 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:48.360 He wasn't the killer. 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:54.080 I have to believe John Grant absolutely extraordinary. But again, 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.880 you could have a whiteboard sometimes of investigations where because 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:03.200 something looks to be unusual doesn't mean to say that 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:09.840 it is so that looked unusual. All those things led 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.400 in one direction. But of course, again he would have 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.440 been delighted that DNA had been invented. He'd be delighted 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:22.960 that had been upgraded and he's been cleared. But if 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.920 you had a whiteboard and we had forty experienced people 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:31.760 down in a classroom looking at this, I guarantee you 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:35.000 that most people would have pointed with all those points 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.000 I was pointing out to you, and there's other things 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.240 that I'm not going to go into, but you would 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:45.400 have said, right, it's guying. Might be the person we 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:46.160 need to look at. 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:50.560 Barry Woodard, one of the two men who entered the 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.280 murder house the night before the women's bodies were discovered, 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:56.640 was the other suspect on the homicide team's initial list, 0:16:57.920 --> 0:16:59.840 but he didn't have to wait so long to be cleared. 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.320 Police quickly accepted the then thirty one year old sheerer's 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.399 alibi and his insistence that he and his brother hadn't 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.480 noticed anything wrong when they visited one four seven Easy 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:15.040 Street and left a note for Suzanne. Woodard also declined 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:16.840 to talk with me when I was writing Murder on 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.520 Easy Street, and did so again recently when I rang 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:21.600 to let him know I was working on this podcast. 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:25.000 But let's not forget that while the Woodard brothers were 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.120 in the house, on Wednesday night, January twelfth, a new 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.000 friend of Susan's had already climbed in through her bedroom 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:32.840 window via the service lane. 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:38.000 The night before, one of the fellows who just met 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:40.840 them climbed in as a footprint that was on the bed, 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.200 and they got in. Been trying to ring the girls 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:46.800 and thought they might add the wrong number, and then 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:48.920 set they climbed back out once they checked the number. 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:51.200 Now you only had to turn your head to look 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:54.840 down there, and you'd see what was their human nature? 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:55.520 Can look around. 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:57.000 I've been trying to ring these girls. I want to 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:58.399 get hold you're just going to go and check the 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.400 number and not so if they're there. Also the young 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:04.760 Gregor who's still there. Whether he's winpling or whatever, we 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:10.560 won't ever know. But I mean he's certainly had no food, 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.520 He never had any drink, He had nothing, His nappies 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:15.520 were soiled, his bed, all that sort of stuff. To 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:18.920 this day, I don't believe this guy. I didn't believe 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.440 him then, I don't believe him. Now you've gone in there, 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.560 Well you've actually gone in through a window which has 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.840 sort of broken in, climbed in over it's bed and 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.120 gone looked at the phone number and not look back. 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.199 We thought we're going to solve this pretty quickly, but. 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:35.600 No, huh. 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.600 He's never been named publicly, but he was a tobacco 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.879 salesman and, as Peter Hiscock says, went round to the 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:46.720 house after the phone kept ringing out on the numerous 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.680 times he tried to call Susan. Fortunately he had a 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:52.840 friend with him who led him up through the window. 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:55.159 He also went straight to police when he saw the 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:59.280 double homicide reported in the Herald on Thursday afternoon, January thirteen. 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.680 They clearly believed he had nothing crucial to add in 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:05.159 terms of detail. He was even allowed to leave the 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.720 country before the coroner's inquest into the murders on July twelve, 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:14.760 nineteen seventy seven. But somehow, nearly fifty years later, the 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.879 fact that three men entered the house where two women's 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:22.240 bodies lay seems even harder to grasp. Can we really 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.719 believe that this first visitor walked through Susan's unlit bedroom 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.359 into the hall, turned right and right again to enter 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:31.760 the laundroom to check the phone on the wall without 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:36.639 seeing her. Perhaps harder to imagine is this guy walking 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:39.520 back into the corridor to retrace his steps out of 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:43.639 the house through her bedroom window. This means that for 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:46.720 a few seconds at least he was facing Susan on 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:48.879 the floor at the other end of that corridor, and 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:51.760 was also close to the next bedroom, where sixteen month 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.600 old greg Armstrong was in his cot Could he really 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.000 not see Susan's body so close to the front door 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:04.160 or hear Gregory. Had he seen her and called police, 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.719 significant time would have been saved. The young women had 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:10.080 been killed the night before, so police would have had 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:12.960 more to work with, but as it was, they weren't 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.520 found until Thursday morning, so that crucial forty eight hour 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:23.400 window had closed. This still drives Peterhiscott quietly crazy, as 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.040 does the fact that an ex police officer was also 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:27.760 on the original list of suspects. 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:31.120 I'm not going to name him. He was an ex 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:35.760 policeman who had left the police force under a check 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:42.920 and a situation involving women. Was not charged, but giving 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:44.480 the opportunity in those days to leave, and. 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:48.520 He did raping women, not quite but harassment. 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.760 I think probably I haven't got evid of that, but 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:57.400 that was allegations. So anyway, he was a plumber working 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:02.359 on a roof not far away. He would have seen 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:07.120 Susan Armstrong was an attractive young lady, and as time 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:11.119 went on, I think, well, this guy would be just 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.360 the sort of guy he had the propensity to put 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:19.440 to females. If I don't book you, I'll come around 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:24.200 to you. That resonated in my mind and bubbled away. 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:28.640 When the million dollar reward came out. I got back 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:31.320 to Hounsld. Mick Hughes, the boss there. They looked out 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:35.639 and they said, no, he's been eliminated again from DNA. 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:41.800 Can't tell me, said he's been eliminated. Now after that, 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:43.800 I've got nobody else. 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.080 Over the next year or so, as the case detectives 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:01.000 have been so hopeful of slving quickly remained unsolved, they 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:05.440 developed that list of eight official suspects. It's never been 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:07.800 released publicly, but it's not hard to work out who 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:12.119 The first four on it were John Grant, the Woodard brothers, 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:17.680 and the tobacco salesman. Then there was the disgraced form 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:21.639 of police officer, a so called champion sportsman eventually identified 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.800 as a racing car driver, and another man detectives tracked 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:28.920 down in Britain. The final person of interest in this 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.960 inauspicious group was a man who hailed from Country Victoria, 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:36.560 specifically the Euroa Banella region, so he was known to 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:40.320 both the Armstrong and Bartlett families. In fact, early on, 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:43.920 Sue's brother Martin and Suzanne's sister Gail told police he 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:48.280 could be involved. He'd gone out with Suzanne several years 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.800 before she traveled overseas, was known to country police, and 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:54.800 had been in Melbourne when the girls were killed. His 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.439 wife told me that a couple of days before their deaths, 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.359 he and a friend had started drinking quote and he 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.720 was getting angry unquote at his home in northern Victoria. 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:07.439 She said she left their house and drove to her 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:09.720 parents place as fast as she could get the kids 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:13.200 in the car. By Monday, January tenth, her husband was 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.000 reportedly drinking at a pub in Collingwood, a few blocks 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:19.200 away from Easy Street. His so called mistress at the 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:21.479 time told Polis he was with her all that night 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:25.960 in Fitzroy, a suburb away. When his wife and I 0:23:26.080 --> 0:23:29.200 spoke in twenty seventeen, she was long separated from this man. 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:32.280 She wasn't sure he could have done something so violent 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:35.280 as murder, but claimed he'd beaten her up before, and 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:37.480 so she knew what he was capable of when he 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:42.200 was drunk. But DNA testing cleared him of the crime, 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:45.440