The perpetrator of a double homicide that shocked Melbourne, Australia in 1977, has been arrested in Rome after a hunt that lasted almost half a century.
The man, a 65-year-old whose name has not been released by Australian police, had been wanted since 2017 for raping and killing two girls, aged 27 and 28: Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett. The bodies, disfigured by stab wounds, were discovered in their Easey Street home on January 13, 1977. Armstrong’s 16-month-old son was found unharmed in his crib. The women were last seen alive three days earlier.
“This was an absolutely gruesome, horrific, frenzied murder,” Victoria Police Chief Shane Patton said at a news conference, calling the Easey Street killings “the longest and most serious cold case in the state.”
The suspect, a Greek-Australian citizen, lived in Greece, where he was protected by the country’s statute of limitations law, Patton said.
Australian police waited for him to leave Greece, the police chief added, and he was finally arrested on Thursday at Fiumicino airport following an Interpol ‘red alert’. Australia will now begin extradition proceedings.
Police have been aided by “advances in technology” over the years, Patton said, declining to provide further details of the investigation. According to a report in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper, police decided to check the DNA of all 131 people listed in the original police file. The suspect was on that list and had agreed to a DNA test, but instead fled to Greece in 2017. He was, however, linked to the crime by DNA from a close relative. According to The Age, the suspect was stopped and searched on the night of the murders by local police who found a large knife on him, three days before the bodies were discovered. At the time, a teenager, he was not questioned about the murders as police were focusing on other suspects.
When a police detective who has led the investigation since 2015 broke the news of the suspect’s arrest to the victims’ families, he found them “emotional, speechless, overwhelmed, but grateful that they have not been forgotten.” “There is no expiration date for brutal crimes like this. I think what happened today is proof of that,” he added.
