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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

If you ask someone from Melbourne, they’ll almost certainly tell you they’ve heard of the 1977 Easey Street Murders.

In one of Victoria’s most brutal unsolved killings, two women in their 20’s were stabbed dozens of times, late at night, in their home on Easey Street, in Collingwood.

Now, after 47 years and 130 persons of interest, police have finally made an arrest.

Today, journalist and author of Murder on Easey Street Helen Thomas, on the killings that haunted Melbourne and the suspect known as the boy with the knife that police missed.

It’s Tuesday, September 24.

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RUBY:

So, hi Helen. Thank you so much for joining me on 7am. It's great to speak with you.

HELEN:

Nice of you to invite me, Ruby. Thank you.

RUBY:

So Helen, over the weekend, there was this huge development in the Easey Street murders. You have followed this case for decades, so what was your first thought when you heard about this arrest?

HELEN:

Ruby I think, like everyone, I was astonished on Saturday morning when that news came through. I think it's the news everyone wanted to hear for such a long time but it had been such a long time. It seemed unbelievable initially.

RUBY:

So let's talk about the two women who were killed 47 years ago now, the two Sues, as they were known. Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett. What do we know about their life in Easey Street?

HELEN:

Well before Easey Street, they had grown up together in country Victoria in a town called Benalla. They'd gone to school together and they'd remained friends into the late teenage and early 20s. And so, in fact, not long before they moved into the house to share in Easey Street in Collingwood, they'd travelled internationally together, they'd gone to Greece, in fact, and had spent several weeks zooming around and then eventually ended back in Melbourne, obviously, and Susan was teaching at a school nearby. She was an arts and crafts teacher. And Suzanne was sort of juggling casual work as she looked after her son. And they moved into Easey Street just a couple of months before this terrible double homicide occurred.

RUBY:

Okay so, tell me what we know happened to the two women, to Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett?

HELEN:

The murder allegedly took place on the night of January the 10th or early the following morning. And it wasn't until Thursday, two days later, three nights had gone passed, when they were finally found, or their bodies were found. And, of course, Suzanne Armstrong’s sixteen month old toddler was also in the house, unharmed, but alone for that length of time, in his cot in the middle room.

The young woman's bodies were found, finally, by one of the women who lived next door, who sort of shared the fence. And she and her housemate began to get out because they could hear Suzanne's son was crying, which was really unusual. Particularly through Wednesday night, they became alarmed and Alona Stevens, who was the neighbour who found the bodies, basically climbed her fence, and went in the back door and walked into a terrible scene, you know, Susan lying in the hallway and Suzanne in the front bedroom. So she called out and said, call the police. You know, the girls are dead. And one of the first two detectives to walk through the door is long retired as a detective, Peter Hiscock. He still says that hardly a day goes by that he doesn't think of the two young women and that scene, because it was so awful and the violence had been so bad.

Audio excerpt - Peter Hiscock:

“Still to this day, and now we're talking about it now, I can see it just like a video in my mind.”

HELEN:

It's on record that both women collectively had been stabbed more than 80 times.

Audio excerpt - Peter Hiscock:

“This was something quite unique. No forced entry, two girls brutally murdered. Now, in those days, you wouldn't see too many, and I don't recall in those days, too many brutal murders like these two. I mean, with time, the internet, we'd see lots and lots of these things. But back in those days, back in 1977, in Victoria, in Collingwood, that was one massive double murder.”

RUBY:

So how did police respond? Tell me about their investigation.

HELEN:

Well, as you can imagine, it was a huge story in Melbourne. And what police did at the time was they walked the blocks up and down Easey Street, obviously, they walked around. They tried to collect as much evidence as they could. And they obviously quickly tried to, I guess, locate as many people as they could who knew the women who might be able to give them an idea of who might have visited on the day or on the night. And from that point, I think it's fair to say that, in the early stages they thought they would be able to solve it quite quickly because there seemed to them to be so much evidence on the scene because there was, you know, so much blood. And in those days, let's remember, they were working with blood samples, or blood analysis, and fingerprinting. But as time went on, it became apparent that it was not going to be a case that was going to be solved quickly.

RUBY:

So, why was that? Why was it that despite this kind of initial sense that there was a lot of evidence at this crime scene and it should be straightforward to find out what had happened, that nothing did happen?

HELEN:

They focussed, and understandably at the time, focussed on two suspects. Initially, one was a young man who'd been out, had taken Suzanne out, a couple of times and had left her a note in the house the night before the bodies were found asking for her to call him.

Audio excerpt - Speaker:

“And there was still no answer. So I went down the side and the gate was halfway open and the door was halfway open and there was a light on. I got a note for her to ring me. And then, you know, if I had walked in a little bit further, well, I would've spotted them, you know, another couple of yards.”

HELEN:

And then the other main person of interest very quickly became a young crime reporter who had been actually staying next door. He worked for Truth and those were the two people initially that they focussed on. They had an original suspect list of eight and over time, as, you know, the years and the decades went on, it wasn't until DNA as a forensic tool came into play, that he was eventually cleared, as were the other seven suspects on that original list. And they basically had to start again.

And so decades passed until finally in 2017, which marks the 40th anniversary, if we want to use that term, of the case, of the murders, comes up and the police announce a $1 million reward, which is something that the Armstrong family particularly had been arguing for. They always felt that there never had been a big enough reward offered to get new information. And so once that happened, there was, you know, the case is back in the public eye again.

That's when they go back into the files and checked on the, I think there were, just over 130 people in the file that they went back and said, okay, we better sit down and really go through this file and see who we should be talking to.

RUBY:

After the break - the evidence police missed, including the boy with the knife.

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RUBY:

Helen, you’ve written a book about the murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, Murder on Easey Street. Could you tell me a bit more about your involvement and your interest in the case?

HELEN:

Well, I started work on the book not long after the reward had been announced in 2017 but initially I started looking at the case back in 2005. So I contacted the detective at the time who had the file. He was very keen to talk and literally about half an hour before I was... I was literally walking out the door to go and see him because the interview had been approved. He rang and was very apologetic but said, “I'm so sorry that approval has been withdrawn.” It always struck me as odd, Ruby, that one minute there was permission, next minute there wasn't. So, when the reward was announced I thought, well, you know what, I might give this another go and have another look at this case. And again, the police weren't keen to talk. But that's when I thought, if they're not going to talk to me, I better start knocking on a few doors. And that's when I did start literally walking up and down Easey Street, hoping that there might be people who were still in that street and around in the area who remembered, you know, the time. And there were.

RUBY:

What did you find out, when you knocked on doors and started talking to people on Easey Street?

HELEN:

I think the thing that was interesting was the fact that as much as the police had done that canvassing initially, as much as it, you know, taken so much information and evidence from the house, what I did find was that a number of people hadn't been spoken to. Perhaps most importantly, a woman who lived next door. I mean, there was a little dunny lane that separated her house and where the two Sues were living. And she maintained that she had seen someone in the house the night the girls were killed and yet, the police didn't take that statement.

We finally found that they did take a statement, but only after Truth newspaper had interviewed her sort of a year on from the murders. So she was a really important witness that for whatever series of reasons, hadn't given her account straightaway. By the time I heard the story, she had died. But I met one of her neighbours, who she had said she'd seen a man walking out of the back gate where the two young women had been living. And he walked towards Easey Street and he had a knife in his hand. That's what she told the neighbour who's still living in the street now.

And to Truth newspaper, she said she got up and looked through at about 2am in the morning, and looked through her lounge room window and saw a man sitting in the room opposite and having drinks with Susan Bartlett.

RUBY:

And Helen, we’re now at a point where a man, a 65 year old man, has been arrested in Italy over the murders. So what did police discover that led to this arrest after 47 years?

HELEN:

Well, Ruby, it seems that, you know, in reopening the case or reinvestigating the case, they came across the name of a young, well, a teenager at the time, 17 I believe, who was pulled over. His car was searched. This is, again, what's being alleged, and a knife was found. It had dried blood on the handle. It was handed to detectives. And that's basically the end of the story up until now.

Audio excerpt - Police:

“A 65 year old Australian-Greek national was arrested in Rome around 9pm on Thursday evening. He was arrested on a Interpol red notice and that was because we had warrants out for his arrest for two charges of murder and one charge of rape.”

HELEN:

The suspect now, as they describe him, was never seen as a suspect then. He was just one of many people that was pulled over and spoken to by police, you know, within the week after the murders. He was contacted again by police in 2017, he agreed to undergo a DNA test but failed to attend a meeting to provide a sample. Now, according to one of John Sylvester's pieces over the last few days, the man of Greek descent flew to Athens about seven years ago and refused to return, despite saying he was going for a short holiday. A DNA sample taken from a close relative is matched to a semen sample found under the body of Susan Armstrong.

Audio excerpt - Police:

“He wasn't able to be arrested in Greece. There is a 20 year, as I understand, statute bar on initiation of murder charges. These... our warrant wasn't issued within that 20 year period. And so it was a matter of waiting, if you like, until he was outside of Greece.”

HELEN:

And the 65 year old suspect, who is still in Italy, has been identified as Perry Kouroumblis, and he was actually a student at Collingwood High where Susan Bartlett taught nearly half a century ago.

RUBY:

And you've been speaking with the families, I believe, of the women since since the arrest. What have they said?

HELEN:

Look, I think, they are just so, in a way, relieved that, you know, this development has occurred. I think, they are incredibly grateful that the police never gave up. They never gave up and the police never gave up. And so that gave them the hope to keep maintaining a sort of... well, at least hope, isn't it? They've endured that length of time hoping that something like this could happen. And it has happened. But, you know, at the same time, someone said to me the other day, are they, you know, are they excited, are they happy? No, I don't think that's how I describe their response. I think they're incredibly grateful and they're relieved. And as I mentioned, Peter Hiscock, one of the first two detectives on the scene in Easey Street, he believed that this case wouldn't be solved in his lifetime. As much as he remembers it, as much as he can't forget what he found when he walked into that little house, he just thought too much time had gone by. It's almost impossible to believe that we've got to this point. But we have.

RUBY:

Just finally Helen, having looked at this case for so long and having spoken to neighbours and people that live near where these murders took place, how much do you think that this case changed Melbourne?

HELEN:

I think the impact these murders had on the city had to do with the fact that here were two vibrant, intelligent young women fatally stabbed in their own home, where we're all supposed to be safe. It was something unimaginable and it happened at a time when really not everyone locked their door. Not everyone had bars on their windows. It was just a different era, it was just a different moment in Melbourne and in Australia.

At the time, if we go back just 18 months, another young woman disappeared that has since been declared to be a homicide victim, Julie Garcia Zelaya disappeared from North Melbourne. From that point on, for the next ten years, something like 20 women, including Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong, were murdered in Melbourne and those cases haven't been solved. Until this weekend, no arrests have been made in those matters. It just seems that was an incredibly violent decade for women in Melbourne.

RUBY:

Yeah, absolutely. Helen, thank you so much for your time.

HELEN:

Yes, thanks. Ruby

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has launched legal action against Coles and Woolworths, alleging the supermarket giants breached consumer law by increasing the prices of hundreds of items by at least 15% before later selling them at regular prices labelled as discounted.

In separate statements, Woolworths says it will carefully review the claims and engage with the ACCC on the matter, while Coles says it will defend the proceedings, blaming inflation for the price changes.

And,

The Australian Government has announced it will provide an additional $10 million in response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

It says funding will be directed to UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund to provide lifesaving assistance, including nutrition support and hygiene kids for women and girls.

Since 7 October, Australia has committed $82.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

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