COLD CASE: The last known picture of nurses Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans. Picture: Photo File Source: Supplied
BRIAN Britcher's car headlights cast their yellow glow over two young women who begged him for help on the Toowoomba Range Rd almost 40 years ago.
In tears, he told a coronial inquest into the brutal double murder of Sydney nurses Lorraine Wilson, 20, and Wendy Evans, 18, yesterday that he did not pull over.
"Had I have stopped I might have been able to help but I thought of my wife and daughter," Mr Britcher said through tears. "And I've lived with that for 38 years."
The women's disappearance in 1974 and the discovery of their bodies bound and beaten in bushland at Murphy's Creek two years later sparked a police investigation that has spanned almost four decades without an arrest.
An inquest in 1985 ruled the women met with "foul play" after their bodies were found on June 26, 1976, with skull fractures and marks consistent with being bound around the ankles with venetian blind cord.
A decades-old battle for justice championed by Eric Wilson, brother of Lorraine Wilson, and tenacious former Homicide Group detective Inspector Kerry Johnson finally bore fruit in September when Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie approved another inquest.
Counsel assisting Craig Chowdhury said yesterday significant amounts of new material had become available to investigators, including countless witness statements that were only obtained between 1988 and 2005.
He said only Desmond Roy Hilton, Allan Neil Laurie and Terrance James O'Neill still lived. Each would be called to give evidence this week.
Former Toowoomba police officers who gave evidence yesterday recalled the Lauries and the Hiltons as local families well known to police.
DECADES OF DESPAIR: Murder victim Wendy Evans' younger sisters Debbie Sneddon (left) and Michelle Tuitufu at Toowoomba for the inquest yesterday. Picture: Mark Calleja
Former detective Paul Ruge criticised the early police investigation, adding that certain lines of inquiry were not followed up.
"If Wayne Hilton had have been alive I definitely had sufficient evidence to arrest him for murder," he said.
Mr Britcher, who gave evidence separately from wife Valma Britcher, told the inquest he reported to police he saw two young women being "frog-marched" along the Toowoomba Range Rd about 9pm on October 6, 1974, "screaming for help".
He said his wife reported the "frightening" scene the next day and again in 1976 when the bodies were found, but a formal statement wasn't taken until 1988.
Mrs Britcher was in the passenger seat and remembered turning around to get a better look at the two women.
She said one was being held by her neck near an EJ Holden which had been "nosed-in" off the road and the other was being restrained by the hair, further down the road. They both screamed out "help me, oh God, help me".
She told the inquest she was too frightened to stop.
She and her husband discussed whether they should drive back up the range to Toowoomba to tell police but instead drove home to Lockyer. Despite contacting police the next day, she said no formal statement was taken until she was contacted by then-detective Mr Ruge in 1988. That same night, former Toowoomba police officer Ian Hamilton and a colleague were called to investigate "blood-curdling" screams about 9pm.
"It's the only time in the service where I have had the hairs stand up on the back of my neck," he said.
"It was the most blood-curdling scream I'd ever heard in my life, it was obvious they were desperate."
He said the screams, from two different individuals, lasted about 40 minutes and appeared to come from the Withcott area.
With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Hamilton said he was "quite confident" the screams could have come from the same place where the women went missing, about 4 or 5km away.
Despite extensive searches, police were unable to find who had made the noises.
Wendy Evans' younger sisters Debbie Sneddon and Michelle Tuitufu travelled from Sydney for the inquest.
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