State Coroner finds no one will stand trial for brutal murder of two nurses at Murphys Creek in 1974

LORRAINE Wilson, 20, and Wendy Evans, 18, were bashed to death, hobbled with cord ``like prey'' and abandoned in a bush clearing at Murphys Creek almost 40 years ago.

No one will stand trial for their murders.

State Coroner Michael Barnes yesterday found a dead man - Wayne 'Boogie' Hilton - and a ''putrid pool of miscreants'' responsible for the violent cold case murders of the Sydney nurses on October 6, 1974.

His findings were the final hurdle in a decades-old campaign for justice by the women's families and a host of dedicated police investigators.

Mr Barnes said there was insufficient evidence to justify surviving persons of interest Allan Neil 'Ungie' Laurie, 63, Terrance Jimmy O'Neill, 61, or Desmond Roy Hilton, 63, being committed to stand trial in connection with the deaths.

He found there was also insufficient evidence to justify the culpability of now deceased suspects Allan John 'Shorty' Laurie, Donald Laurie and Larry Charles.

Bloody and ruthless, the Hilton and Laurie gang ruled Toowoomba with a terror that kept good people from intervening when the two women begged for help on the night they were killed, he found.

Countless witnesses who gave evidence during the inquest told how they had feared stopping to help the women in case it put themselves and their families in danger.

Hailing from the smaller towns of Inglewood, Goondiwindi and Texas, the gang was made up of extended family and interrelated by marriage and blood.

The Hiltons and the Lauries gained notoriety for habitual violence, including one member who knocked down his own mother and stomped on her head, Mr Barnes found.

He said their depravity included the gang rape of numerous young women, many who came forward to police only recently as a result of media coverage of the inquest.

Three of those alleged rape victims - named only as Anne, Gail and Kerry-Ann - provided chilling accounts of violent rapes committed at the hands of the gang and its members.

The women's evidence told of being lured into cars with no door handles by the gang, driven out into the bush, fed too much alcohol and bashed.

Mr Barnes, who faced a quandary on whether or not to include the women's evidence as permissible, reasoned the accounts corroborated that at the time Ms Evans and Ms Wilson disappeared, the gang ''were in the habit of taking your women into the bush around Toowoomba and forcing them to have sex with threats of violence and actual violence''.

Ms Evans and Ms Wilson left the Camp Hill home of Ms Evans' sister Susan Vlismas on the morning of October 6, 1974, with the hope of hitchhiking back to Dubbo, where Ms Wilson's family had a farm.

Both women were trainee nurses at the St George Hospital at Kogarah in Sydney and were due to return to work after a travelling holiday by October 10.

Their car, a VW Beetle, broke down and was awaiting repair in Goondiwindi.

The women were seen getting into a green and white EH Holden with two men who looked like Wayne 'Boogie' Hilton and Alan John 'Shortie' Laurie on Ipswich Rd at Oxley by witness Anthony Dougherty around 11am that morning.

He said one of the men had ''a stupid grin on his face'' and the women argued between themselves about whether or not to join them in the car.

Housewife Norma Sperling told the inquest she was in her kitchen when a woman who looked like Ms Wilson sought refuge in her laundry because she ''wanted to get away from some people''.

Ms Sperling identified Wayne 'Boogie' Hilton on a police photo board as one of two men who ''hit her (Ms Wilson) across the face'' and forced her into the car alongside another woman in the back seat.

She did not report the incident until 1989 under instruction from her husband who warned her it was ''probably just a domestic'' and ''don't get involved''.

Numerous others, including Brian and Valma Britcher and Neil and Josceline Beadle, reported seeing the women ''screaming for help'' or being ''frogmarched'' down the Toowoomba Range Rd.

Ms Britcher told the inquest one woman screamed out ''help me, oh God, please help me'' as they drove past but said she was too frightened to stop.

Vivian and Rose Murphy told the inquiry of a woman who ran in front of their car ''waving her arms'' and calling for help while another woman was held down by a second man in front of a parked car.

Other witnesses were able to identify members of the Hilton and Laurie gang, picked out by their car headlights in the darkness.

Mr Barnes said 10 people in total saw the women struggling with two men on the range and although their accounts all differed slightly, found it was ''inconceivable that something of this nature did not occur''.

That same night, police officer Ian Hamilton heard ''blood curdling'' screams coming from the vicinity of the Yukarnavale Youth Camp, between Withcott and Toowoomba on the uphill section of the range.

He described them as ''the most terrifying and horrendous screams'' he had ever heard but in the swirling winds off the mountain, was unable to determine where they came from.

It wasn't until the discovery of the women's skeletal remains in 1976 that Mr Hamilton realised the police record of the incident matched with the women's supposed disappearance.

Mr Barnes found the women's skeletons were largely intact and there was evidence they may have been fully clothed when they were killed, with remnants of jeans and underwear still in place.

Their legs were hobbled together in a formation ''apparently used by pig hunters'' with venetian blind cord, most likely used at a nearby bacon factory to cut through offal, the Coroner found.

He said Ms Wilson had major fractures on the left side of the back of her head, indicating around three blows before death. He said Ms Wilson had multiple severe facial injuries, indicating she was ''literally bashed to a pulp'' and ''suffered more blows than would have been necessary to kill her''.

Mr Barnes identified numerous witnesses as unreliable, including Des Edmondstone, who came forward just this month to claim Larry Charles confessed to having been involved in the women's murders in the late 1970s.

He also said the evidence of Walter Laurie, Alan John 'Shorty' Laurie's younger brother, who claimed he was at a ''gang bang'' party at Murphys Creek as a 10-year-old was ''even among these sociopaths, inconceivable''.

But he credited the evidence of others, including former Highfields saw mill manager Neil Shum who Wayne 'Boogie' Hilton apparently confessed to having picked up two nurses, having ''a bit of trouble with them and ended up murdering them''.

The inquest was frustrated by witness Kim Sandercock who Mr Barnes said ''would not engage with the inquest in a meaningful manner, claiming, falsely in my view, that a prolonged regime of strong analgesics had robbed her of any memory''.

Her statement in 1989 claimed one of the murdered women was killed with a hit to the back of the head from behind while she sat in front of a car and the second woman killed after escaping her captors who ''vented their anger'' by repeatedly stomping on her face.

Mr Barnes said the account consistent with evidence at the scene and at autopsy and suggested Ms Sandercock may even have been present at the time of the killing.

Surviving persons of interest Desmond Roy Hilton and Alan Neil 'Ungie' Laurie struggled to remember details during their evidence under oath.

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