It remains one of our most baffling unsolved cases. Who killed Easey Street residents Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong?
MOST BAFFLING CASES: two women were stabbed 84 times in a shocking sex murder in Easey Street, Collingwood 38 years ago, and no one has ever been charged.
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THERE were two hand-written notes left at the quaint Collingwood home when the butchered bodies of friends Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong were discovered in pools of blood.
Victims of a maniacal “frenzied sex killer” who’d gone “berserk”, the two occupants of the Easey Street home had been stabbed 84 times between them.
One note, pinned to the front door, was from neighbour Ilona Stevens: she and her housemate had found a dog belonging to one of the women wandering the streets, and had taken the pet into their care.
The other note, left in the kitchen the day after the double slaying, was from Ms Armstrong’s unwitting boyfriend.
He was with his brother when he slipped the note on the table; both men unaware of the horrors that lay behind the closed door leading down the hallway.
“Ring Barry as soon as you get home” the boyfriend’s note read.
The expected phone call, of course, never came.
The stabbing murders of Ms Bartlett, a 28-year-old schoolteacher, and Ms Armstrong, a single mum aged 27, have remained a grisly mystery since the January 1977 crime was committed.
Then head of the homicide squad, Det-Insp Noel Jubb, described it as “one of the most barbaric and sadistic sex murders in Victorian history.”
It remains one of the state’s most baffling murder cases.
EASEY Street in Collingwood was a quiet place where people kept to themselves.
The tenants who lived in the modest brick terrace at number 147 were no different.
Ms Bartlett and Ms Armstrong, who lived with her baby son Gregory, were described as “quiet and pleasant neighbours who were shy but well mannered.”
Having grown up and gone to school together in the country before moving to Melbourne, the two women led normal lives.
They were sexually assaulted and viciously killed on the night of January 10, 1977.
It wasn’t until two days later that Ilona Stevens and her housemate Janet Powell found the mutilated bodies after hearing little Gregory crying.
“The horror of that morning (January 13) will haunt me for the rest of my life,” Ms Stevens said at the time.
“I keep thinking it could so easily have been my girlfriend (Janet) and I who lay dead and mutilated.”
The crime scene was the stuff of nightmares.
Blood spatter patterns and smears told detectives a horrific tale.
Ms Bartlett, her body slashed and riddled with 55 stab wounds, was lying face down in the hallway.
Wearing a nightgown, it appeared she was attacked after coming to the aid of her housemate.
Ms Amstrong, naked from the waist down with her nightdress pulled up around her neck, lay on her back on the bedroom floor.
She had been stabbed 25 times.
Blood in the bathtub suggested the killer had washed his hands before leaving the house.
Thankfully, Ms Armstrong’s toddler son was left untouched in his cot.
“The poor kid must have been screaming his head off,” Det Sen-Sgt Oldfield said.
Ms Stevens had heard the baby crying when she entered the house.
“I reeled in horror (when I found the bodies),” she said at the time.
“I remembered that I had to keep a grip of myself for Gregory’s sake.”
The dehydrated boy was taken to the Royal Children’s Hospital.
After the gruesome discovery, Det-Insp Jubb said most of the stab wounds were the result of “deep, full-blooded thrusts.”
“Whoever stabbed the women is a very, very sick person — a maniac type,” he told The Sun newspaper at the time.
Homicide detective Alf Oldfield added: “Those two young women were victims of the most frenzied attack I have ever seen. Most murderers will only inflict one or two wounds; this bloke went berserk and stabbed them time after time.”
While it was not established for certain how the killer got inside, it was suggested one of the women may have let him in.
“A book was found lying open and face down at the top of her (Ms Armstrong’s) bed and the bedclothes were folded neatly back,” Det Sen-Sgt Oldfield said.
“If you were disturbed by an unwanted intruder, it’s unlikely you would carefully place the book you were reading on the bed before folding back your sheets and getting up.”
A shaken and shocked Mr Woodard said he was left numbed by the murders.
“I stood only six metres from her body, not knowing she was there,” he said at the time.
“I think I would have asked her to marry me if she was still here.”
Investigators questioned several men who knew the women.
“We interviewed all the men we could find ... and found nothing to connect any with the murders,” Det Sen-Sgt Oldfield said.
The possibility it was a random attack could not be ruled out.
In the kitchen, investigators found mysterious page clippings from the January 13 edition of The Age.
This proved intriguing, considering it was established the two victims were killed on January 10.
The clippings indicated someone had been in the house not long before neighbours found the bodies.
Nine days after the double murder, a knife believed to have been used to kill the women was found at nearby Victoria Park railway station.
It was a possible breakthrough, but the dead women’s relatives were still reeling in grief.
Ms Bartlett’s brother Martin and Ms Armstrong’s father, Bill, visited the Easey St house together two weeks after the crime scene had been scoured and cleared.
They were there to collect the belongings.
“I know two wrongs don’t make a right,” Mr Armstrong told The Herald newspaper, “(but) please though, he (the killer) must be found. The man who did this must be found.
“She was a wonderful girl, wonderful and independent ... Strong minded.
“She’s always done well — could get a job anywhere. She travelled the world twice.”
Martin Bartlett, too, pleaded for information and an arrest.
“He’s out there living an existence,” Mr Bartlett said of the mystery killer.
“I’m still so stunned.”
One month after the killings, detectives told the media they were confident they knew who the killer was, but needed to talk to a vital witness.
“The information this person has is vital,” Det-Insp Jubb said.
“Once we have it I’m confident we can wrap up the case very promptly.”
The arrest never came, despite the offer of a $40,000 reward and information offered by a British clairvoyant.
“We don’t deal with mystics,” homicide squad chief Paul Delianis said publicly in June 1978 after it was incorrectly reported investigators had taken part in a “sitting’ with a visiting British “mystic” who claimed she had made contact with spirits linked with the Easey Street murders.
GAYLE Tilton, Ms Armstrong’s sister, adopted little Gregory.
She planned to tell him the truth about what happened to his mum when he was old enough to understand, she said.
“It is only fair to bring him up with the knowledge of what happened, rather than let him find out suddenly when he is grown up,” Ms Tilton told the Sunday Press in May 1977.
“We will never be able to put this out of our minds until the person who did this thing is in the hands of the police.”
Years later, Ms Tilton did tell Gregory about his mum’s fate.
“I told him his mother was killed by a bad man,” she told the Sunday Press in July 1985.
“Luckily he remembers nothing of it. He lives a normal, happy life.”
While links to other similar crimes were never established, the Easey St sex murders bore a strong resemblance to the unsolved murder of a woman named Jenny Rose Ng.
Ms Ng, a mother of four, was stabbed more than 20 times in a Richmond flat while her baby
daughter lay in the next room.
That crime, committed only three kilometres from Easey Street, happened in 1982 — five years after a coroner found Ms Bartlett and Ms Armstrong were murdered by a person or persons unknown.
“In their summing up of their investigations, police described the case as a very brutal murder,” the coroner said.
“That description sums up everything I have to say about it.”
Notes containing clues and hinting at the identity of the killer have appeared in mail drops, but none have led to a resolution.
The latest lead in the investigation came on February 26, 2014, when a woman claimed to know the man responsible for the murders.
That lead did not result in an arrest or charges.
So far, justice has not prevailed — but the case could still be solved.
Anyone with any information is asked to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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