Jury in High-Profile Australian Homicide Trial Visits Beach At Which Victim Was Discovered
Members of the jury overseeing a widely publicized Australian homicide case have been taken to the isolated shore where the young woman was located.
The 24-year-old victim was repeatedly stabbed with a bladed weapon and placed in a sandy grave with minimal hope of surviving, the jury has been told.
Her body were found by her father the following day on Wangetti Beach – a section of shoreline between the tourist centres of Cairns and Port Douglas.
The accused, 41, denies murdering Ms Cordingley on a Sunday afternoon in October 2018 in Far North Queensland.
Court Visit to Crime Scene
The jury of 10 men and two women plus several back-up jurors visited the location along with the judge and barristers on the start of the week local time.
In a acknowledgment of the tropical conditions and sweltering heat, the judge opted for a T-shirt, sport shorts and trainers rather than a wig and robes.
Both the lead prosecution and defence barristers chose casual shirts, shorts and baseball caps.
Location Particulars
The jurors were led around 1.2km north up the sand to see where Ms Cordingley's body were uncovered.
Earlier, as they traveled to the site, four red and white cones indicated where the victim's car had been parked.
The visit was designed to help the panel become acquainted with important sites in the trial and no testimony was presented.
Background of the Case
Previously, the court heard that the following day Ms Cordingley's remains were discovered, Mr Singh departed from Australia to India – abandoning his wife, family and relatives.
He was not heard from until he was apprehended four years later, the prosecution said.
State Argument
It is claimed that Mr Singh, who was employed in healthcare in the community of Innisfail, near Cairns, had a confrontation with Ms Cordingley.
The pharmacy worker was found wearing a bikini, with all her other clothes and belongings absent.
Those items were removed by the killer to avoid detection, the prosecution allege.
Her dog, Indie, which Ms Cordingley had taken to the beach for a walk, was found tied up to a post concealed in shrubland about 100 feet from the burial site.
No murder weapon was found, and no one have been found.
But the prosecution says the evidence – though indirect – was made up of proof that pointed to Mr Singh "excluding other suspects."
This will involve evidence that genetic material obtained from a object at the location was 3.8 billion times more likely to have originated from Mr Singh than a random member of the public.
The jury has already heard testimony indicating that Ms Cordingley's mobile device left the beach after the incident – and that its movements matched those of a vehicle belonging to the accused.
Mr Singh's quick exit from Australia also pointed to his guilt, the prosecution has argued.
Defence Stance
"As the police were finding Toyah's body, he was arranging... a hurriedly arranged one way trip back to India," Mr Crane said previously as he opened his case.
The defence is has not present any evidence, but in his initial statement, Mr Singh's barrister the lawyer portrayed his defendant as a "placid" and "compassionate" man, who was in the "wrong place at the wrong time."
He also hinted at evidence to come later in the trial that, after his apprehension, Mr Singh informed an plainclothes agent he had seen assailants attack Ms Cordingley and then had run away in fear – something he said was his "gravest error."
Mr McGuire has also said he will testify about individuals "identified and unidentified" who should come under suspicion.
Further Evidence
Ms Cordingley's boyfriend at the time, the witness, whom authorities quickly ruled out as a possible suspect, was among those who gave evidence last week.
The trial was informed he was an immediate police suspect – and that he had been interrogated from Ms Cordingley's father about whether he was implicated in his partner's vanishing, even before her body were discovered.
Images showing Mr Heidenreich on a walk with a companion on the day Ms Cordingley went missing have been shown to the court, with an specialist saying he was confident the pictures were genuine and had not been altered in any way.
The case will resume to the more conventional setting of the courthouse on the next day.
