AFTERWORD

Despite repeated requests over the past eighteen months, Victoria Police refused to discuss the Easey Street murders for this book. Nonetheless, I tried to keep them informed about my inquiries.

Had a detective from the Homicide Squad been available, these are some of the questions I would have asked:

•Was there any note made of Gladys Coventry’s account of the man she alleges she saw in the women’s house the night they were killed? Why wasn’t an Identikit sketch made of this possible suspect? Why was there no follow-up with this witness over the next decade, while she continued to live in the house next door to the murder scene?

•Why has Peter Sellers never been formally interviewed about what he heard early on Tuesday morning, 11 January 1977?

•How thoroughly did detectives investigate Peter Collier’s claim that his friend Jack Christie was the killer and had ‘confessed’ in group therapy at Larundel Psychiatric Hospital? Has Jack Christie’s DNA been tested, either before or after his death?

•Given the police focus on John Grant as the main ‘person of interest’ in this matter for at least twenty years, were known associates John Joseph Power and Anthony Collins also considered suspects? Were they DNA-tested?

•Why have key witnesses not been re-interviewed since the reward was posted?

•How many people have been DNA tested to date? Has the suspect’s DNA profile been added to international databases? How long can this testing continue, given the size of the killer’s DNA sample?

•Do police have a key suspect they are investigating?

•Is the cold case unit confident that they will solve the Easey Street murders?

•Realistically, how long will you continue to look into this double homicide?