On a nondescript summer morning nearly five decades ago, Detective PETERH.

Hiscock was one of the first to be confronted by an especially distressing crime scene.

It was Thursday, January thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven, and the bodies of two young women lay on the floor of their small workers cottage in Easy Street, Collingwood.

They'd been dead for two days and three long nights.

It would be absolutely fair to say that I'm seventy five now, hardly a day goes by.

I would say that I don't think about this particular murder.

Thirty year old Peterhiscock was one of the first detectives to enter the house in Easy Street, and he's never forgotten it.

If I drive up Hoddle Street, it doesn't matter where I'm going north or south, I always will go over to Easy Street.

I know it's changed, but it's just something that happens to me.

I just look up and down there.

Now.

I've done an extraordinary amount of investigations since that time, but there's always something that stays in your mind, and those two murders stuck in my mind.

The murders of twenty seven year old Susan Bartlett and twenty eight year old Susanne Armstrong in their own home shook the staid city of Melbourne to its heart.

Senior police warned all women living in the city to take care as a sex maniac was on the prow, even going as far to advise them to lock their doors and windows.

It's always concerned me the number of women who do live alone or secondly stay alone in their homes and seem to take no precautions at all.

What do you mean exactly, Well, they leave doors open, they leave windows open, they leave lights on.

In other words, they add the time, the fact that they are home alone, leave blinds open while they're watching Kelly in this sort of thing.

But are you suggesting that those women should lock themselves away.

I don't suggest they should put themselves in the form of being imprisoned, but I think there are certain reasonable security measures that people can take to ensure their safety.

Their language was almost visceral, the details released about the attack unpleasantly blunt and from the outset.

The deaths of the two suits, as the friends were affectionately known, has haunted investigators and community, and not just because of the terrible violence involved.

It's also been dogged by almost implausible circumstance.

Aside from Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong's killer, three other men had gone in and out of their little house as they lay dead, apparently unnoticed, just meters away, with Suzanne's young son, Gregory, lonely dehydrated and hungary in his cot.

All three men claimed not to have seen or heard anything suspicious during these nocturnal visits.

The first to enter the house was a friend of Susan's.

Incredibly, the night after she was killed, he walked up the side lane of the property and climbed in her bedroom window, moving into the hall, agonizingly close to her body to get to the phone in the lounge room.

He told police later that he had been calling Susan and wanted to check that he had the right phone number.

After getting no answer, reassured that he had the correct number after checking the old fashioned war phone in the lounge.

He then retraced his steps, climbing back outer window and into the laneway.

A friend was waiting for him there in the lane, so could verify this, as hard as it is to believe.

Twenty four hours later, two brothers entered the house through the back door to see if Suzanne was home.

The oldest of the pair had taken her out the previous weekend, and as arranged, tried to ring to confirm the next date.

Unable to reach her, the shearer from Country Victoria decided to pay her a visit at home, but he and his brother told detectives that after calling out to see if Suzanne and her toddler were home, they'd gone no further than the lounge that night to check if anyone was there.

Instead, the new suitor left a note on the kitchen table asking Suzanne to call him.

I went around there that night and just knocked at the front door, and there was a note on the door, and there was still no answer.

So I went down the side and the gate was half way open, and the door was half way open, and there was a light on, and you, brother, I got a note and for her to ring me.

And then you know, if I had walked in a little bit further, well, I would have spot on you another couple of yards.

Did it ever occur to you to look in the rest of the house.

Not really, No, I don't like going in people's houses.

You know while there's snowing there, So it's being shocked to me.

Yeah, well, Ida, it was gout to shakes and smoke.

Can't even eat.

Forty seven years later, it beggars belief that three people did not see here or sense anything amiss when inside a house beset by such trauma.

Then again, what kind of person could encounter a scene like that and not raise the alarm.

Police believed the three men had nothing to do with the murders.

They were quickly cleared as suspects by detectives.

The first visitor even allowed to leave the country before the coroner's inquest was held, and not much was made of their presence at all.

But there's no denying that their failure to notice anything wrong meant that two young women slain had to wait almost two and a half days to be found in the summer heat in the heart of a busy city.

Disconcerting two was the fact a man already linked to the disappearance of a nineteen year old woman in the city just eighteen months earlier, and only a couple of suburbs away, had been staying next door on the night of the Easy Street murders.

For detectives it was a coincidence, too ugly to ignore.

What were the odds of anyone being so close to two such cases?

Improbably this man was also a crime reporter with Melbourne's Truth newspaper.

Such strange twists of fact in a high profile homicide investigation are almost too bizarre to be true, but they are.

When alone of Stevens and her housemate Janet Powell caught their neighbor's young dog running loose in the street, they had no idea of the saga about to engulf them, a saga still without end nearly fifty years later.

Like the two suits, they were bright, busy young women, aloner working at the Truth newspaper, Janet co managing Casanova, an Italian restaurant in Carlton.

The four women had only lived side by side for a few months and so hadn't had time to really get to know each other.

Look just as neighbors, nodding hello, how are you?

How's baby?

Oh?

Nice, nice puppy, but not that well, just to talk to, because don't forget, Janet and I both worked chief work and they worked regular jobs, so because our hours were so different, we really didn't ever become friendly, although we were roughly the same age.

Okay, well let's go back to that week of January nineteen seventy seven.

When did you first notice that something might be wrong, something might be a miss.

Well, probably when I got home from work, because the dog was out, and that was very well.

It was just strange because we lived it's near, very near Hoddle Street, and it was only a puppy, so you just don't let your dog out, even though in those days, of course people were more careless, but it just was unusual because they weren't careless people.

That was Tuesday, so I would have got home from work, puppy was out, went straight round, knocked on doc, no answer.

Well, I just thought that were out, So I took the puppy back into our house and just kept it and thought, no, well, we'll hear them come home and I'll whip next door then, but of course heard nothing.

Later that Tuesday evening, Alona and Janet tried another tack.

They left a note on the front door of one four seven.

It read, dear sus, we have your dog which was wandering around the street.

You're obviously not home, so give us a yell and we'll return.

Same to you promptly, regards Alona and Janet.

Alona left for work the next morning and didn't notice the note was still there, exactly where they'd left it, But when she got back home later that Wednesday evening, she saw the note was still pinned to the door and the young dog was still in their backyard.

More worryingly, as she got ready for bed, she could hear little Greg crying, albeit softly, from beyond the party wall the two cottages shared.

Probably by Wednesday night, we were well, Janet not so much because she was real busy, you know, the two of them were trying to run a restaurant and she would just come home, exhausted, fall into bed, get up next day, go back to the restaurant.

But yeah, just was odd.

The note was still on the door, We still have the dog, and periodically I thought I could hear Greg crying.

Wimprings.

Not nothing major, but you know, you put that sort of stuff out of your mind.

By Thursday morning, both a loner and her housemate Janet sent something really wasn't right.

A loner recalls being a bit cross that a neighbors still hadn't collected their dog, but she was becoming increasingly uneasy about Greg's welfare, so before going to work, the pair decided to try their neighbor's front door again.

They knocked loudly, banging harder the next time, then harder again.

Still no answer.

Nothing.

So I decided I'd hop the fence and opened the gate and put the dog in the air.

The gate was onto the lame way in their garden.

We didn't have a gate in our garden, so that's when I hopped the fence.

First thing Thursday morning.

When Alana walked through the back door and into the kitchen, she sang out to the girls to see if they were home.

She quickly passed through the small lounge room and into the hallway that ran along three rooms and up to the front door.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw Susan face down on her stomach in the hall, heartbreakingly close to that front door, and then moving forward, Suzanne on her back on the floor of the first bedroom.

It was a tableau of unfathomable tragedy.

Alner could see the women had been brutally killed.

What she couldn't know at the time was that they had been stabbed collectively more than eighty times and Suzanne raped after death.

The back door was open, well, not wide open, but certainly unlocked in Ajar.

So I walked in saying, do you who?

Anyone home?

And got no reply.

But as soon as I looked up the hallway it was completely obvious why there was no reply.

And what did you see?

I actually saw Susan's feet and they didn't look real flash.

They were you know, sort of black, and you just look and you know, you go, oh, this is bad.

Because the hallway had no windows, you know, the windows were in the rooms, so it's quite dark.

But I do remember clearly seeing her feet and they weren't moving.

What confronted her as she walked through the house remains daunting, especially that long check up the hallway to where Susan lay to see if there was anything she could do to help her.

Well, I was still in the middle of going you who, So I walked down and as I got closer to her, it was very obvious that she was dead, and I kind of knelt over just to make sure I didn't touch her.

She was right.

Her head was right at the front door, and that's when I looked sideways into the front bedroom and saw Suzanne.

It was obvious that Susan had been almost brutalized.

There was sort of handmarks on the wall.

But Suzanne was lying on her back and fairly scantily clad, and it was quite obvious she was dead too, And so I just then I turned and walked out and yelled out to Janet to call the police.

In her haste to check on Susan and Suzanne alone hadn't even glanced at sixteen month old Greg Armstrong, who was in his cot in the middle bedroom, But as she headed to the back door, she checked on the little boy.

Well.

I actually walked in there and had a look at him.

He was I guess he was probably dehydrated, but he seemed fine.

So I just kept going and yelling out for Janet to quickly call the police.

Do you remember how she responded to you.

I mean, it must have been a shock for her even hearing that.

Yeah, I recall she just sort of went why and I said, the girls are dead, and she just ran inside because in those days we had the black dialar phone, so she dialed the police and I just waited outside at the front, no out the side, and Alona Stevens had to wait for a while.

She's pretty sure.

It took two telephone calls to get the local police to take seriously what a housemate was reporting two women were dead in the house next door, but even then only a young uniformed officer was dispatched to see what was going on.

One uniformed officer.

Things sort of moved slowly in your mind, but I do remember thinking this is urgent, and then of course one car rolled up with someone who is probably my age, saying, you know what's going on here?

And I said, I think my neighbors have been killed.

The pattern of not hearing women trying to share information with police that shadowed this and other call cases in Victoria started even before the official investigation.

I remember there was no urgency from anybody.

They certainly were not believing us, and hence they sent the young man in one car.

I was waiting in the lane, so he came up to me and I said, look, you need to go inside.

They did.

He did walk inside, and within it seemed like five seconds there were police and cars and uniform and non uniform, and we were surrounded by activity.

Finally, Victoria's homicide squad was at the scene.

Going there on that day myself, Graha McDonald got a call that there was a double death in a house in Collingwood.

It's a lower socio economic area those times, so you never assume anything, but it was quite possible it was a murder suicide or just a double suicide.

Who would know.

We had no idea because the uniform police had been there and they were not to go in.

So when we arrived there was a young policeman just inside the door.

He's been guarding it and it was just a scene that you'd never ever forget in your life.

Former Detective Peter Hiscock remained struck by the horrific nature of the attacks on both women, Susanne Armstrong first in her bedroom and then Susan Bartlett in the hall.

Still to this day now we're talking about it now, I can see it just like a video in my mind.

And of course then we went around the back being the scene.

Now scenes that protected a whole lot better now than they were there.

They're protected then, but they've changed a lot now and what you see on TV is probably what happens now, but not in those days.

You're just going to see what's happened.

For a start to quickly try and assess it.

But it didn't take myself and Grahea McDonald very long to work out.

This was one terrible, terrible murder.

Two murders that occurred.

And what did this scene initially, Peter tell you about how the girls had died, what the killer had done.

Killer had used a knife, would have to have been a big knife because of the defensive wounds in Susan Bartlett's arms.

Susan Armstrong had massive, massive, multiple, multiple stab wounds, and it looked like there was no forced entry, so already it was starting to unfold.

This was something quite unique, no forced entry.

Two girls brutally murdered.

Now, in those days you wouldn't see too many, and I don't recall those days too many brutal murders like these two.

I mean, with time the internet, we'd see lots of lots of these things.

But back in those days, back in nineteen seventy seven in Victoria, in Collingwood, that was one massive double murder.

The fact that they found young Greg and his court having survived such an ordeal still amazes this veteran investigator.

Well, we were both young parents, Graham and I and of course that was very disturbing.

He had been there and if I recall, the temperatures were in excess of one hundred degrees.

Now in Celsius, what are we talking, this is up over forty degrees.

So he was in there totally totally exhausted, totally dehydrated, been the same nappy, and was quite surprising to me that he was still alive.

So, I mean, at that age he obviously couldn't witness anything.

But whether the killer missed him or whatever, I don't know, or killer as we would never know.

I still to this day think it was only one person.

Peter Hescock says the scene he and his colleagues encountered that morning was dire.

Nevertheless, it revealed a lot about the murderer, and quite quickly.

Well, if robbery was not a motive, the bathroom we now we learned straight away that the killer had stood in the bath and washed himself down with blood, because he would have been covered in blood.

It would have been very, very brutal.

So whether.

He's done this to wash himself off forensics, or whether he's just done that as an instinctive, it's hard to know.

There wasn't a lot of blood in there, but it was yeah, we could tell from going back there that that's what happened.

Yes, it was very unusual when there's no DNA in those days, I mean blood types or something.

I mean pretty we have a lot of people have got A or B or whatever.

So that was there.

That was obviously called for the forensics.

But something that we did was took the plumbing apart and at the elbow there was pieces of bone.

Now these were pieces of these defensive wounds that Susan Bartlett had put up.

What you took the bath apart or you were under the under the house.

Yeah, I personally wasn't there when that happened, but it was, yes, it was pulled apart.

I actually had to escort the to deceased to the mortuary and I had to be present whilst the post mortems were undertaken and thereby we were given samples of their blood, hair, nails and for continuity.

They then have to be conveyed back to the forensic science by one person to the other break continuity.

So that was my job.

So I was present and that's why I'm certain that I know who was murdered first.

And talking about at the Morgue, Peter, I mean, how traumatic was that for you as a young detective.

You're only thirty.

From what you've said to me over the years, you were actually helping him take account of the number of times both women had been stabbed.

Yeah, you would stand it's close to this table.

You would stand there with a clipboard noting on a diagram of a female body where stab wounds were.

It is traumatic, but we were taught and always emphasized by that pathologist that the exhibits that can help us.

For instance, is the person right handed, is he left handed without uppercuts lower cuts, so he changed hands to do other wounds because there was strongly amount of stab wounds.

And also was one killed earlier and then someone came back and killed the other one.

Those I mean, it's quite basic stuff that unfolds very quickly.

But you have to be there to know these things, and it's not theathologists job to work out these things, but they are very helpful.

And these are things that when you interview someone only you will know if someone's telling lies and also tell if someone's just making it up or wanting to be famous, and that's happened, that's happened many times.

So what did his time with pathologist James McNamara tell him about the Easy Street killer?

Was he left or right handed?

I'm thinking it was a right handed person that just he would have been a powerful unit.

He would have been powerful because of the amount of stab wornds making sure that he killed them.

And Susan Bartlett had put up a massive fight in the hallway, so she's heard the noise and come down, and that's why it makes sense someone's come in the front door.

Susan Armstrong was reading a book, she had the light on.

She's put the book down, the pages open, and just thrown the sheets back and hopped out to see who it was.

And then she was struck right between leaving her bed very small house, of course, and before getting into the passageway.

But she was moved further, we believe after she was dead.

But then Susan Bartlett's come out of her room down to see what's going on, and that's when it's second murders occurred.

But it would have been a lot harder.

Susan Armstrong wouldn't known what was going to happen to her.

She would have just met this person and that's why we always thought he personally thought must have been someone they knew.

Peterhiscock is still goold by the time.

He and his partner wasted early on in a case that was already getting caught as they tried to link the footprint on Susan's bed cover that was left by the first male visitor to the house after the women were killed.

And then there was the newspaper dated that very day, January thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven.

This paper was puzzling, we thought, Graham and I thought straight away that this offender has come back.

He's come back to see his work or whatever.

We just were puzzled.

We spoke to the young policeman.

There no nothing.

So we actually took them back to the Collingwood Police station for a briefing and one of the young fellows we said to look, no one's in any trouble.

If they went into the house, no one's any trouble.

What had turned out one of the young fellows thinking I've got to sit here for wile and guard this scene.

He's taken the newspaper in when we've arrived, she just put it down stepped outside as if to say, well, I was here, I didn't go inside, hid me that he'd beat in.

Well, of course that can change investigation very quickly, as I said, the first twenty four hours, because we're thinking, wow, this guy's not far away.

It was quite quite exciting.

So he admitted that, so things changed.

Back to the problem we had was that it was like three hours and we had to wait for post wards.

So the investigation then was ramped right up.

Of course, the press were all over this.

This was probably one of the most horrific crimes around that time, and the press got hold of this, but it was a difficult investigation.

In the meantime, we had other serious murders, one out in the jail, some bikeies, two bikeies.

These are all going on up in the country.

So looking back now to something that happened like that, now, with the resources you would have, you'd be able to put a lot more into it.

But that being said, we covered every every track, and I believe I go back in my mind a lot because I read things and you criticize.

I'd like to think that I was Sorah I would have loved and all sort of loved were solved.

I would hope as of getting on in my ears that we would be able to solve it and I would be absolutely devastated.

There was something that we'd missed.

Looking back, he shouldn't be too hard on himself.

Then, A young detective, Peterhiscock, was rostered off on annual leave days after walking into the little house in Easy Street and never reassigned to the case.

But something was missed in those summer days of January nineteen seventy seven, and nearly five decades later, Susan and Suzanne's deaths remained distant yet impossibly close for family, friends, and at least one detective.

Look, this guy has done something so bad, so bad that yeah, humanity just would never even forgive him, no matter who the relative was.

What he did to those two girls could never ever ever be forgiven by anyone.

Next time, on the Easy Street Murders.

Forty five years ago, a single mother was regarded very poorly.

My girlfriend rang me at work and said there's been a murder in Collingwood.

She didn't turn up, so we rang.

She didn't answer.