Overview
- Magistrate Brett Sonnet refused a defence application to suppress DNA likelihood ratios, noting the case rests almost entirely on forensic evidence.
- The court heard DNA statistics including semen and blood samples said to be up to 100 billion times more likely to match Kouroumblis than an unrelated person, with other ratios cited at 650 million, 1,000 and 4.1 billion.
- Neighbours Janet Powell and Ilona Miklosvary described finding Susan Bartlett and Suzanne Armstrong dead on January 13, 1977, and rescuing Armstrong’s distressed toddler.
- Former officers Gary Looker and Douglas Carroll gave evidence about the early investigation, including a knife found in Kouroumblis’s car in 1977 that later testing did not link to blood.
- Defence barrister Dermot Dann raised alternate-suspect lines, questioned a former colleague of a neighbour, and played audio of detectives pressuring Barry Woodard in 1977 as he maintained his innocence; the hearing is set to resume on November 24.