A man wanted for one of Australia’s most notorious cases, known as the Easyy Street murders, is on his way back to the country after being extradited from Italy.
Suzanne Armstrong, 27, and Susan Bartlett, 28, were stabbed to death in their Melbourne home in 1977, in a case that has shocked the nation ever since.
Police said suspect Perry Kouroumblis, 65, only became the focus of their investigation in recent years after breakthroughs in DNA testing.
Mr Kouroumblis – who has not been charged and maintains his innocence – was detained in Italy in September. He is due to arrive in Australia later on Tuesday.
Kouroumblis first came to police attention a week after the murder, when the 17-year-old said he found a bloody knife near the scene in Easey Street, Collingwood, an inner-city suburb.
The bodies of the high school friends were discovered three days after they were last seen alive. Ms. Armstrong’s one-year-old son was also found in the house, lying in his crib, unharmed.
Police said both women had been stabbed more than a dozen times and Ms. Armstrong had been sexually assaulted.
The case has long attracted a lot of interest – becoming the subject of major police appeals, true crime books and a hit podcast. In 2017, Victoria Police offered a reward of A$1 million (£511,800, $647,600) for information.
Commissioner Shane Patton described the killing as “an absolutely gruesome, gruesome and frenzied murder” as he announced the arrest of Mr Kouroumblis – a dual Greek-Australian citizen – in Rome in May. 9.
“This was a crime that struck at the heart of our community – two women in their own homes, where they should have felt safest,” he said.
Police issued an Interpol red notice against Mr Kouroumblis for two counts of murder and one count of rape, after he left Australia about seven years ago.
But he cannot be arrested in Greece, where he lives, because the country’s law requires murder charges to be brought within 20 years of the crime.
At the time of Mr Kouroumblis’s arrest, the women’s families released a statement saying their lives had been “irrevocably” changed by the murders.
“For two quiet families from country Victoria, it has always been incomprehensible to them the violent and needless manner in which Suzanne and Susan died,” the statement said.
Addressing police, they said: “For always giving us hope and never giving up, we just say thank you.”
