With their first year of nursing finished, Wendy Evans and Lorraine Wilson were in search of adventure.

The Sydney-based pair set Brisbane in their sights and took off in Lorraine’s Volkswagen Beetle in the Spring of 1974.

Wendy and Lorraine made it to Goondiwindi before car troubles interrupted their fun.

But Wendy and Lorraine weren’t easily deterred.

They hitchhiked to Queensland’s capital, where they spent the week enjoying their young lives to the fullest.

It was their return trip home that would tragically change the course of both of their lives.

Wendy and Lorraine, still waiting for the Beetle to be repaired, made the fateful decision to continue hitchhiking.

They left Wendy’s sister’s home in Camp Hill at 11am on October 6, 1974, bound for Dubbo.

It would be the last their loved ones saw them alive.

In the days that followed Lorraine was killed by what is believed to be sharp blows to her head.

Wendy was savagely bashed and her skull rendered to a pulp.

Their bodies were discovered by chance in June 1976 at a clearing on the outskirts of Toowoomba.

Wendy and Lorraine were fully clothed, and their legs were bound in a manner used by pig hunters to hobble their prey.

The hunt for their killers began immediately.

Multiple witnesses reported seeing two men and two women arguing beside a light green Holden sedan on the downhill section of the Toowoomba Range, just hours after they were seen in Brisbane.

Varying reports indicated a woman was pulled toward the car, while others say they heard women calling for help.

Several of those witnesses said the women matched the description of Wendy and Lorraine.

But in the 50 years since their deaths, justice was never delivered to the people who savagely murdered these two women.

The one got away

Retired detective Paul Ruge believes that if Wayne ‘Boogie’ Hilton was alive today, police would have enough evidence to charge him with the double murder, along with accomplice Allan ‘Shortie’ Laurie.

The two men were part of a network of criminals who had run afoul of police but were not considered murder suspects until late 80s.

Mr Ruge was handed the cold case in 1987 after police received a tip-off from a prison informant who recalled hearing two other inmates brag about killing the women.

He interviewed the three inmates but said their story did not stack up.

“They were basically big-noting themselves,” Mr Ruge said.

From these interviews, Mr Ruge was led to other members of their families, namely best mates Wayne Hilton and Allan Laurie.

“There were a number of things that made them the prime suspects,” Mr Ruge said.

They included an eyewitness who put the men with Wendy and Lorraine at a shop on Ipswich Road close to when they disappeared, along with other witnesses who believed they saw the men arguing with the women on the downhill section of the Toowoomba Range.

Mr Ruge said Allan Laurie’s birthday was around October 6 and the men had travelled to Brisbane so he could get a tattoo to mark the occasion, so it was possible they could have picked the women up near the city.

A third witness claimed the rope used to hog-tie the women was the type used at the KR Bacon factory where Allan Laurie worked, while a fourth witness said she saw Wayne Hilton removing carpet from the back of a light green Holden sedan and burning it around the time of the murder.

“Putting all those little things together painted a picture that Wayne Hilton and Laurie were involved,” Mr Ruge said.

Unfortunately, his suspicions could never be tested by a jury.

Wayne Hilton died in a motorbike crash in June 1986 while Allan Laurie went silent.

“There were a number of things that made Allan Laurie a prime suspect but he claimed legal privilege,” Mr Ruge said.

“We took him into the police station and as soon as we told him we wanted to talk about the murders he went ballistic.

“He bellowed like a bull and we did not get any further than that.

“That was strange for him, he had only had minor involvement with traffic offences, and such a reaction was indicative that he had some involvement.”

Police could not build a sufficient case to charge Allan Laurie before he died from a heart attack in the early 90s.

In the years that followed, Mr Ruge said the cases against the men had strengthened, in particular by several women who came forward around the time of the second Coronial Inquest in 2013.

The inquest heard material from three women who alleged they were abducted off the streets in Toowoomba by men fitting their descriptions, and raped.

He is haunted by the case.

“I still think regularly about the fate of the two women and what has happened since then,” Mr Ruge said.”

Questions remain

While the coroner has ruled that Wayne Hilton was responsible for murders, not everyone is convinced.

True Crime podcaster Amanda Doyle has spent the past three years combing through material from the three investigations and believes the matter is far from solved.

She said there was information provided to police that the nurses were intending to stay with a family at Murphys Creek, who came to know Lorraine through connections in Dubbo.

“There was no mention of this family during the inquest,” Ms Doyle said.

“I would have thought interviewing them would be crucial for establishing a timeline.”

There were also discrepancies in the accounts given to police from the witnesses who saw two men and two women arguing on the downhill section to the Toowoomba Range Road.

“There were also other people who came forward but were not mentioned in the 2013 inquest, including two men who called Crime Stoppers in 1997 and said they were with Lorraine and Wendy in Toowoomba.

“They inserted themselves into the investigation, but have never been questioned by police,” she said.

“What information they have would be crucial for the timeline.”

She is highly critical of the inquest.

“My worry is that there are people out there who have information but won’t come forward because they have this narrative in their mind,” Ms Doyle said.

“People with relevant information can’t come forward if they are working with incorrect information.”

One woman knows the truth

Perhaps one of the most bizarre witness statements came via Kim Sandercock.

Ten years after the brutal murders, she told Mr Ruge that she was approached by a drunk woman at the Crown Hotel, who went into painful detail about the grisly event.

The woman is known only as ‘Ellen’.

The 2013 inquest heard ‘Ellen’ told Ms Sandercock that she was with “Shortie and one of the Hilton boys when they killed the nurses”.

In Ms Sandercock’s statement to police, she said Ellen said she was with the two men when they picked up the nurses with the intention of raping them in some scrub at Murphys Creek.

She said one of the girls was in the front passenger seat and arguing with the driver when the second man hit her in the back of the head with a metal bar, causing her to fall forward and die.

‘Ellen’ is alleged to have said that the second woman started screaming and was gagged while the group drove to the clearing at Murphys Creek.

When they arrived it is alleged the second woman tried to flee but did not get far as her legs were tied.

‘Ellen’ went on to say that one of the men bashed the second nurse’s head to a pulp, and pulled out chunks of hair.

This is the only account on record that marries with injuries the nurses suffered – Lorraine suffered a sharp blow to the back of her head, while Wendy’s skull was shattered in dozens of pieces.

Mr Ruge said this information about the injuries was not publicly known when Ms Sandercock made her initial police statement.

“When I took her statement, it was like she was in a trance, going back on what she remembered,” he said.

“It is unusual that a person, quite a few years later, would remember in that level of detail what that woman told her.

“It seemed to be more that she was the person who was reliving what she saw.

“It was eerie.”

Of the nine witnesses who came forward to report the altercation on the Toowoomba Range, none mentioned a third woman, though one mentioned a third man.

“I think her account fits the description of what actually happened,” Mr Ruge said.

When it came time for the 2013 Inquest, Ms Sandercock declined to contribute in a meaningful way, saying she was on a course of medication that affected her memory.

When News Corp contacted Ms Sandercock to ask about her meeting with ‘Ellen’ she again declined to comment.

The case remains unsolved, with a $250,000 reward in place