Easey Street investigators asked about suspects, handling evidence at crime scene

Three of the detectives who first investigated Melbourne’s Easey Street killings have given a snapshot of the police probe into the double murders from nearly 50 years ago.

The retired investigators described other suspects they had considered and defended their conduct at the time – such as not using gloves when collecting crucial evidence – while being questioned by lawyers for accused killer Perry Kouroumblis during a hearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

Police allege that between January 10 and January 13, 1977, Kouroumblis entered the Easey Street, Collingwood, home of Suzanne Armstrong, 27, and Susan Bartlett, 28, and killed both women. Kouroumblis, now 66, is also accused of raping Armstrong.

Former policeman turned private investigator Peter Hiscock told the court of other people who were later ruled out as suspects by detectives after his retirement.

They included the man staying next door on the night of the killings – then-crime journalist John Grant – and former traffic policeman Ian Lloyd, whom Hiscock told the court was known to proposition women for sexual favours to avoid traffic tickets and who also worked as a roof plumber in the area.

Hiscock said that as a young detective, he was particularly suspicious of Grant. He said Grant had also been “on the scene” of the 1975 suspected murder of Julia Ann Garciacelay, and was later the last person to see NSW woman Juanita Nielsen alive.

“I do recall having a conversation with the boss at the time ... saying, ‘What are the chances of a crime reporter being on the scene of three murders?’” Hiscock told the court on Monday.

Police had later ruled out both Grant and Lloyd as suspects in the Easey Street case, Hiscock said.

When asked why Grant was eliminated from inquiries, Hiscock said: “Ask [former homicide detective] Ron Iddles.”

Hiscock also told the court he believed the knife found in a car connected to Kouroumblis, near Victoria Park train station, was ruled out as the murder weapon because it was “too big, too rusty”.

The knife, he said, was later stored in the homicide squad’s “murder room”, a separate, non-refrigerated area of the Russell Street police headquarters where exhibits were stored in cardboard boxes.

Hiscock said that in 1998, he passed on all of his recollections and opinions to Detective Stuart Bateson, who was re-investigating the cold case and had contacted the former detective.

Another former detective, Colin Favre, who left the job in 1980, was one of the first officers on scene at Easey Street on the morning of January 13, 1977.

He and then-colleague Terry Purton told the court they and other officers didn’t wear gloves while at the property because it wasn’t their job to touch things.

Favre was later shown images of a man, thought to be him, holding a towel in his bare hands outside the home while standing at the back of a police car. He agreed the image was likely him.

Detective Senior Constable Sally McCurrach was tasked with collecting a bag of evidence from the property store, now at police headquarters in Spencer Street, in August 2015 and taking items to be forensically examined.

She said the bag contained blood, hair and nail samples, knives and bedsheets. A note inside the bag indicated other items, including pillows, were missing.

Iddles and Bateson are expected to give evidence on Tuesday.

The hearing, which will determine whether Kouroumblis stands trial, continues.

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