‘I reeled back. I was horrified’: Dad tells of moment he found daughter’s body

A father has testified that he was “horrified” to find the slain body of his daughter, Toyah Cordingley, during an impromptu search for the missing woman.

Rajwinder Singh pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court on Tuesday over the 24-year-old’s murder more than six years after her body was found at an isolated Far North Queensland beach.

Cordingley drove to Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, for a Sunday afternoon walk with her dog on October 21, 2018, and never returned.

Toyah Cordingley with her father, Troy.Credit: Facebook

Her father, Troy, told the jury on Wednesday he set out to search the beach pre-dawn the following day.

He said he felt tired and went to rest under trees, where he saw a mound in the sand.

The jury heard he dropped to his knees after thinking the mound looked unnatural and odd.

“I scooped the sand three times. On the third scoop, there was a foot,” Mr Cordingley said as his voice broke with emotion.

“I reeled back. I was horrified. I yelled out: ‘help me, help me’. I was shocked, stunned.”

Crown prosecutor Nathan Crane took the jury through the movements of Cordingley’s phone on the day of her walk. He said it left the beach at 5pm, adding that was likely to be after she died.

The jury was told the phone was roughly located in numerous areas that corresponded with a blue Alfa Romeo sedan seen on several CCTV cameras driving to Lake Placid holiday apartments.

“The vehicle has features of its colour, its wheels and its distinctive grille ... Rajwinder Singh owned a blue Alfa Romeo, a similar vehicle,” Crane said.

Jurors were shown photographs of the mound that covered Cordingley’s body after she was found.

Singh, who sat in the dock with his hands clasped in his lap, closed his eyes and looked down while the images were displayed on a large screen.

Crane said a stick was found partially buried with Cordingley, whose throat had been slashed and her chest and hands stabbed.

“Mr Singh was 3.7 billion times more likely to contribute the DNA found on that stick,” he said.

A male DNA sample 2000 times more likely to be from Singh than a random man was found on Cordingley’s fingernails.

The jury heard Singh left Australia for New Delhi the day after Cordingley’s body was found, and he was not seen again until he was tracked down in his native India in November 2022.

“[He] did not return to [his wife] or his children. The house was lost. The mortgage was not paid. He did not return to work [as a hospital nurse],” Crane said.

Defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury in his opening address that anyone at the beach that day could have killed Cordingley.

“As you go through the trial, ask yourself if Mr Singh being the killer is the only possibility,” Edwards said.

He asked the jury to consider whether the evidence about the phone, DNA and Alfa Romeo was as strong as the prosecution suggested.

Later in the day, Edwards cross-examined Cordingley’s partner, Marco Heidenreich, a whitewater rafting guide from Port Douglas.

Heidenreich denied having anything to do with Cordingley’s death.

He agreed his stepfather was a former Cairns police officer and was friendly at the time with a detective investigating the death.

“Did you think there was anything unusual about your treatment by the police?” Edwards asked. “No,” Heidenreich replied.

The trial is due to run for another four weeks in Cairns before Justice James Henry.

AAP