IT’S a region with fewer than 500,000 people, but for long-time Cairns residents, the recent discovery of a brutally murdered young woman on a tranquil beach is a crime all too familiar.
On August 4, 1985, emerging Sydney TV scriptwriter Miranda Downes, 35, set off for an afternoon jog along Buchan Point Beach, 25km north of Cairns.
Approaching her in a yellow Ford Bronco four-wheel-drive was invalid pensioner Ernest Arthur Knibb.
There was little Miranda could do to save herself. Knibb ploughed into her. But he wasn’t done there.
The crime had a sexual motive, police believed, and Miranda’s clothes were found torn from her body.
Rape was likely, an expert witness later told the court at his trial, before Knibb strangled the last remnants of life from her as the tide rose around them.
Knibb was released from custody in 2013, aged 72, and was last known to reside at a retirement home in Brisbane’s east.
But this week – more than 30 years after Miranda’s death – old wounds were reopened when the lifeless body of 24-year-old Toyah Cordingley was found on nearby Wangetti Beach.
And some residents find the similarities between the killings too close for comfort.
Cairns councillor Max O’Halloran remembers Miranda’s murder all too well.
He called the similarity between her killing and that of Toyah “eerie”.
“It’s terrible actually. And (Miranda’s murder) does come back to you,” Cr O’Halloran said. “Young people in the prime of their life – words don’t do it justice. It pulls the community up with a wallop.”
Knibb’s actions were the height of arrogance following Miranda’s death.
He happily volunteered for questioning in the months following, after another young woman reported having a run-in with a 4WD that matched Knibbs in the same area.
The killer even took a lie detector test and agreed to answer questions while hypnotised.
With police unable to charge Knibb due to a lack of evidence, he all but boasted about his alibi in a series of newspaper and TV interviews.
During his chats with journalists – before he was charged – he was vocal in his denial about killing her, making up a series of stories to help convince the public of his version of events.
But he slipped up, giving a different version to 60 Minutes reporter Ian Leslie to the one he gave police. It helped lead to his conviction and subsequent life sentence two years later.
Residents are praying that justice is served far more swiftly for Toyah in 2018.
Add your comment to this story
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout
Shock link between UK child killer and Aussie bishop stabbing
The teen who murdered three little girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England had searched for material on the stabbing of a Sydney bishop.
New law to block legal challenge to AN0M sting
New laws will prevent any legal challenge to one of Australia’s most successful covert stings in organised crime using the encrypted AN0M application.