Easey Street accused faces murder, rape charges after extradition to Australia

The prime suspect in one of Victoria’s most infamous unsolved killings has landed in Australia and will soon be charged with the 1977 Easey Street murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett.

Perry Kouroumblis, a 65-year-old dual citizen of Australia and Greece, landed at Melbourne Airport at 11.32pm on Tuesday after a two-leg flight from Rome flanked by homicide detectives.

Victoria Police said he would be interviewed later on Wednesday and subsequently face Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.

“The man will formally be charged with two counts of murder and one count of rape during this court appearance,” police said in a statement released about 2am on Wednesday.

Kouroumblis – who was aged 17 when Armstrong, 27, and Bartlett, 28, were found stabbed to death in their Collingwood home almost 50 years ago – maintains his innocence.

The decades-old Easey Street cold case burst into the headlines in September when Italian authorities arrested Kouroumblis at Rome’s airport on an Interpol notice. Within days, he agreed to be extradited to Australia, marking a major milestone for Victoria Police in one of their highest-priority cases ever.

The Qatar Airways flight with Perry Kouroumblis aboard lands at Melbourne Airport.Credit: Luis Ascui

Dean Thomas, the head of the homicide squad, sat one row in front of Kouroumblis on the Airbus A350 flight that left Rome about 1am AEST on Tuesday and landed in Doha about 6am. After 10am, the travelling party departed on a 13-hour Qatar Airways flight to Melbourne.

At Tullamarine Airport shortly before midnight, a handful of media watched the Boeing 777 land after an approach from the north.

Kouroumblis first came to light in the Easey Street murder investigation shortly after the crime, when police allegedly found a knife and sheath in his possession that contained traces of blood. At the time, he told detectives he found the knife on train tracks in Collingwood.

At the time of the killings, he lived just a few hundred metres away from the Easey Street house where the bodies were discovered in January 1977, alongside Armstrong’s unharmed 16-month-old son.

Perry Kouroumblis, second from right with white beard, in Rome preparing to depart Italy for Australia.Credit: Nine News

In a relaunched 2017 investigation, police identified Kouroumblis as a person who should be reinterviewed and DNA tested. Then aged 57, he agreed to provide a sample. He later left Australia and moved to Greece.

He could not be extradited from Greece; under Greek law, charges must be laid within 20 years of the alleged offence. Attempts through diplomatic channels to have him returned to Melbourne failed, and he was put on an international watch list that led to his arrest in Rome.

Family members have speculated he was lured to the Italian capital for a potential business deal.

His Italian lawyer, Serena Tucci, said she met with Kouroumblis before his extradition and that he was “worried” about returning to Victoria.

Kouroumblis says he wants to clear his name.

With Jessica Millward

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