An Indian nurse has been found guilty of the savage stabbing murder of a young Australian woman Toyah Cordingley on a remote beach near Cairns in Far North Queensland.
Rajwinder Singh, 41, flew back to India shortly after Toyah’s body was found half-buried in sand dunes by her father at Wangetti Beach on October 22, 2018, and was arrested in New Delhi after a $1 million reward was offered for information on the runaway suspect in late 2022.
He pleaded not guilty to murder during a four-week retrial in the Cairns Supreme Court nine months after a jury in his first trial was unable to reach a verdict, but on Monday afternoon he was found guilty after seven hours of deliberations.
Toyah, an animal shelter volunteer, had driven to the beach with her dog on a Sunday afternoon, but after she failed to return her family raised the alarm and launched a search.
The next morning her dad Troy found her body with a slashed throat and 26 stab wounds in a shallow grave 800 metres from her car, and her dog tied to a tree unharmed.
Singh booked one-way flight back to India the same day, telling his wife he would be gone for a couple of days, and she and their three children lost their home during his four-year absence as they were financially dependent on him.
He became a person of interest to police three weeks after Toyah’s death when detectives matched the movements of Toyah’s phone to his blue Alfa Romeo sedan, and he was eventually arrested at Sikh temple following the announcement of the reward, that was split between multiple people.
More than 70 witnesses gave evidence at Singh’s trial, and the nine-man, three-woman jury heard evidence that Toyah’s murder was so brutal that she was almost decapitated, The Cairns Post reported.
Singh pleaded not guilty and no motive has been established for for the murder, with his barrister Gregory McGuire KC urging the jury to consider deficiencies in police investigation, including the discovery of DNA belonging to an unknown person, and calling the Crown case “insane”.
But Crown Prosecutor Nathan Crane told the jury the circumstantial evidence against Singh had to be considered together, including DNA found on a stick on top of sand covering Toyah’s body that was 3.7 billion times more likely to belong to Singh, his flight from Australia, and the movements of her phone and his car.
He told told court the DNA found under her fingernails “almost perfectly” matched Singh, and that the killer had given no explanation how his DNA ended up there and on the stick when he claimed he saw two masked killers from far enough away that they were unable to chase him down.
More to follow.
