Homicide detective recalls horrific scene at 147 Easey Street – and the day he spoke to alleged killer

Homicide detective Douglas Carroll was only two weeks into his new job when he came face-to-face with the accused Easey Street killer in 1977.

An aged Carroll gave evidence in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Thursday about the day he took a statement – and a knife – from a then-teenage Perry Kouroumblis, who decades later is facing a preliminary hearing charged with the murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett.

Carroll told the court he first became involved in the case when he and other detectives were called to the Collingwood home on January 13, 1977, to respond to a possible double murder.

He said the horrific nature of the scene, two women with multiple stab wounds, meant it was a memory that had stayed with him.

Carroll told the court he recalled speaking to forensic officer Henry Huggins about the apparent sexual assault of Armstrong, but could not recall if he spoke to others about the possibility she had been raped after she was killed.

The court heard that police-issued diary notes showed Carroll later spoke to suspects Barry and Henry Woodard, who knew Armstrong, and took a statement from Ross Hammond, a friend of Bartlett’s.

The men had visited the Easey Street house between January 11 and 12, 1977, and left notes for the women.

Later, on January 15, Carroll said he took a statement from 17-year-old Kouroumblis after he had been intercepted by then-constable Ron Iddles, and a knife and sheath were found in the car he was driving.

“Yes, I took that statement, it’s in my own handwriting. I can’t remember taking it,” he said.

He said the knife – a photograph of which was visible on the back of the statement he held in court – was taken back to the station and put in a metal box before being taken to forensics.

In Kouroumblis’ statement to police, he said he went to see a friend on Peel Street on January 10, 1977. He later visited the police station with that friend to verify his account, the court heard.

It came as the defence raised a list of other men who had been around the women and their neighbours at the time of the brutal killings, including a local journalist who had been sleeping next door to the murder house, and had already been connected to another, earlier unsolved homicide.

Defence barrister Dermot Dann, KC, also challenged police over the tactics they used during recorded interviews almost 50 years ago.

In one interview played to the court, an unidentified officer challenges a suspect about their involvement in the slayings.

“I’m not going to let a f---ing murderer get out of this place,” the officer said. “You killed those two bloody girls, there’s no doubt about it. I know it, you know it, and every other bloody detective that’s worked on it knows it.”

Dann said Hammond’s statement was that he had visited the Easey Street home on Tuesday, January 11, 1977, and climbed through Bartlett’s bathroom window, leaving a footprint on a bedsheet.

Now-retired detective Adrian Donehue maintained Hammond had been in a relationship with Bartlett and was never classified as a suspect.

“We never had any good suspects. I wish we had,” Donehue said.

Police allege Kouroumblis murdered Armstrong, 27, and Bartlett, 28, some time between January 10 and January 13, 1977. The court has heard Kouroumblis maintains his innocence and intends to plead not guilty.

Ilona Miklosvary, formerly Ilona Stevens, lived next door at 149 Easey Street and found the women’s bodies when she and a housemate heard a baby’s cries and went to check on Armstrong and Bartlett.

“I went in and found the girls, and rang the office to say I could come in … because I just found my neighbours murdered,” she said.

Miklosvary, a former journalist for The Truth newspaper, was working with a man named John Grant at the time, who had visited her home during the time period police believe the women were killed.

Grant, a crime reporter, had been a suspect in an unrelated murder case that occurred in North Melbourne 18 months earlier – the killing of Julie Garcia Soleil, 19.

“It was an uncanny coincidence,” Donehue said.

On January 10, 1977, Grant was drinking with Miklosvary and Powell, who maintain they did not hear any noise coming from next door with the record player going and the trio playing pool for much of the evening.

While under questioning from the defence, she was asked if she recalled telling police Grant was foul-mouthed and after having a few drinks, was known to walk up to women he didn’t know and “ask for a f---”.

“It was in keeping with most of the men I knew. And everybody else in the office,” Miklosvary said.

“It was the ’70s – you weren’t there [Mr Dann].”

Dann suggested that at the time of the killings, the witness told police Grant was capable of murder. She denied this.

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