Jurors have been sent to an Australian beach where a woman was found dead with multiple stab wounds.
Toyah Cordingley, 24, was repeatedly stabbed with a sharp object and put in a shallow sandy grave in October 2018. Her body was found by her father on Wangetti Beach, a coastline between Queensland towns Cairns and Port Douglas.
Prosecutors alleged 41-year-old nurse Rajwinder Singh murdered Cordingley, as the day after her body was discovered he flew from Australia to India with no return ticket. He left behind his wife, three children and parents.
Four years later, in November 2022, Singh was found in his native India and arrested on suspicion of Cordingley’s murder.
Singh faced trial earlier this year and, after more than two days of deliberating, the jury said it was deadlocked and could not reach a verdict.
A retrial began on 10 November. On Monday, the jury of 10 men and two women, alongside three female reserve jurors, were taken from the Cairns Supreme Court to the beach carpark.
The trip was intended to help jurors be familiar with key locations and no official evidence was given. The group were led about 1.2km north up the sand to see where Cordingley’s body was discovered.
They were also shown where the victim’s car had been parked.
Prosecutors allege Singh had a confrontation with Cordingley, a pharmacy worker walking her dog, before he murdered her and dug a shallow grave.
Cordingley was found by her father wearing a bikini and all her other clothes and most of her possessions were missing. Prosecutors argue those items were taken to avoid detection.
The pharmacy worker’s dog, Indie, was found tied up to a tree hidden in shrubland about 30 metres from the grave.
There was no weapon found and no eyewitnesses.
The prosecution acknowledged at the beginning of the trial that the evidence was circumstantial, but found through elimination their case pointed to Singh.
Evidence includes DNA recovered from a stick at the scene was 3.8 billion times more likely to have come from Singh than a random member of the public.
Cordingley’s phone also left the beach after the murder, the movements of which matched a blue Alfa Romeo owned by Singh. The prosecution also argued the nurse’s sudden departure from Australia proved his guilt.
"As the police were finding Toyah's body, he was organising... a hurriedly arranged one way trip back to India," lead prosecutor X said.
Singh’s barrister is yet to present evidence but in his opening address said his client was placid and caring who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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