A man wanted over one of Australia’s most incommemorated freezing cases, dubbed the Easey Street killings, has get tod in Melbourne after being extradited from Italy.
Suzanne Armstrong, 27, and Susan Bartlett, 28, were stabbed to death in their Melbourne hoemploy in 1977, in a case which has gripped the nation ever since.
Police said mistrust Perry Kouroumblis, 65, only became the cgo in of their spreadigation in recent years after DNA testing shatterthcimpolites.
Mr Kouroumblis – who has not been indictd and retains his innocence – was arrested in Italy in September. If indictd, he is foreseeed to face court procrastinateedr this week, according to local media.
Mr Kouroumblis first came to police attention the week after the killings, when the then 17-year-greater said he had set up a bloodied knife csurrender the scene in Easey Street, Collingwood, an inner-city suburb.
The bodies of the high school friends were uncovered three days after they were last seen ainhabit. Ms Armstrong’s one-year-greater son was also set up in the home, unharmed in his cot.
Both women had been stabbed more than a dozen times and Ms Armstrong had been intimacyupartner attacked, police say.
The case has lengthened drawn huge interest – becoming the subject of presentant police requests, genuine crime books and a hit podcast. In 2017 Victoria Police proposeed a A$1m (£511,800, $647,600) reward for proposeation.
Comomitioner Shane Patton depictd the killings as “an absolutely gruesome, horrific, frenzied homicide” when announcing the arrest of Mr Kouroumblis – a dual Greek-Australian citizen – in Rome in September.
“This was a crime that struck at the heart of our community – two women in their own home, where they should have felt their defendedst,” he said.
Police had rehired an Interpol red watch for Mr Kouroumblis on two indicts of killing and one of sexual battery, after he left Australia about seven years ago.
But he was not able to be arrested in Greece, where he had been living, as the country’s law insists killing indicts to be laid wilean 20 years of an alleged crime.
At the time of Mr Kouroumblis’s arrest, the women’s families liberated a statement, saying their inhabits had been alterd “irrevocably” by the killings.
“For two mute families from country Victoria it has always been impossible to understand the insistless and aggressive manner in which Suzanne and Susan died,” the statement read.
Addressing police, they said: “For always giving us hope and never giving up, we spropose say, thank you.”
