Toyah Cordingley (Final Update)

There has been another major update in the story of Toyah Cordingley (episode #169 from 2021). After a trial earlier this year ended in a mistrial, the case against Rajwinder Singh was sent back to the Cairns Supreme Court. In November 2025, a four-week trial began to decide his fate...



Researched, written, hosted, and produced by Micheal Whelan

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
In October twenty eighteen, twenty four year old Toya Cordingly
set out along one giddy beach with her husky cross Indy,
and vanished. The next morning, her father found her body
half buried in the dunes. Her throat had been slashed
and she had sustained dozens of stab wounds. Her dog, inby, survived,
tied so tightly to a nearby tree that the dog

(00:26):
could barely move. The violence sent shockwaves through the region.
This crime took place in in Queensland, in particular, the
town that Toya was from, Cans. Residents marched against violence
toward women. Vehicles carried Toya's name on their bumpers. People
pleaded for anything that might help police understand who had
done this. Within days, detectives focused on a single individual,

(00:50):
Rajvinder Singh, a forty one year old former nurse who
had been living in Innisfail with his wife and three children.
He and Toya had never met before yet in in
the days after her killing, he abruptly fled to India,
leaving his career, his friends, and even his family behind.
After that years passed, a historic one million dollar reward

(01:12):
brought the case back into motion. And tipsters finally traced
Singh to a Sikh temple in Delhi, India in late
twenty twenty two. He did not fight extradition. Authorities returned
him to can in early twenty twenty three, where he
repeated I did not kill the woman, even as he
was charged with murder. When I last brought you an

(01:32):
update in this case, the first trial of Rajvinder Singh
ended without a verdict, so the entire case returned to
the Cannes Supreme Court in November twenty twenty five for
a four week retrial before Justice Lincoln Crowley. Prosecutors arrived
with a heavily forensic presentation built across more than eighty witnesses. Detectives, scientists, witnesses,

(01:55):
and even Toya's friends and family took the stand. Crown
Prosecutor Nathan krane Of stripped the state's case to what
he called ten essential threads that included the DNA findings,
the mobile phone data, the disturbed belongings at the beach,
and the choices Rajvindor Singh made in the aftermath. He
urged jurors to see those threads as a structure, something

(02:17):
that tightened each time another question was asked. Investigators had
spent years reconstructing Toya's final hours. Her phone connected to
three local towers as it left the beach. Timing advanced
data let detectives estimate distance from those towers, and thirty
two traffic cameras captured vehicles passing through the region at
the time. A pool of two hundred and nineteen cars

(02:40):
narrowed Rapidly. Timed test drives confirmed which vehicles could be
ruled out. Public appeals eliminated many more. The process left
only one blue Alpha Romeo one fifty six, a model
with just three examples in the region, and it just
so happened to be the model that Rajvendor Singh owned.
Detective Sergeant Matt mac testified that the vehicle's path matched

(03:02):
Toya's phone signal with uncanny precision. Further investigation confirmed that
the car belonged to Singh. Yet the human sightings told
a bit of a different story. The beach was crowded
that afternoon. Eight visitors described movement along the sand and
commotion around the car parks. One woman, Merinda Bong, recalled

(03:22):
feeling watched by someone she believed was an Indian man.
Her partner insisted that the man she saw was Caucasian.
Specialist gathered samples from Toya's body, which just so happened
to be the makeshift grave site, as well as Rajvinder
Singh's possessions, a long stick and several bark fragments found
at the site became central pieces of the case. Forensic

(03:43):
scientist Angelina Keller testified that the mixed DNA on the
stick made it a billion more times more likely for
Singh to be the contributor than any unrelated person. The
tree bark carried the same statistical force. Toya appeared as
the dominant source and Rajvinder sing as the second. Then
there was the evidence found on Toya's body. Injuries on

(04:05):
her fingers indicated defensive wounds, and scrapings taken from beneath
her fingernails held degraded y chromosome DNA. The samples were fragile.
Laboratories in New Zealand ran specialized many str tests to
salvage what they could. Doctor J Shri Patel testified that
the two tests each produced twenty seven male markers. One

(04:26):
of these tests matched rajvindor Singh in twenty six places.
The other matched him completely. If you assume therefrom one male,
they all correspond to mister Singh's DNA profile. The doctor
explained the sample contained a faint trace from a second contributor,
but that tiny fraction did not match Toya's boyfriend, which,

(04:47):
of course, defense attorneys were arguing. Prosecutors told the jury
that the implication was unavoidable. Singh's DNA had been under
her nails, which meant Toya fought someone in her final moments,
and that that someone was rajvinder Se. Police swabbed Rajvindor
Singh's clothing, bed linen's knives, and his vehicle the ALFA
ROMEO for Toy's DNA and found none. Despite that, though

(05:10):
prosecutors claimed that a man with nothing to hide, as
Singh argued through his attorneys, would not have fled to
another country, what emerged was a portrait built from material
rather than speculation. The DNA carried statistical weight in the billions.
The physical struggle appeared etched into Toy Accordingly's right hand.
The journey of her phone mirrored the journey of Rajvindor

(05:33):
Singh's vehicle. These details did not appear as isolated anomalies.
Crane told the jury that they formed a single web
and Singh was at its center. In his closing address,
Nathan Crane described Singh as a man who led easily
and often. You reminded jurors that Singh told his wife
he would only be gone a few days, yet he

(05:54):
bought a one way ticket to Delhi, India and never returned.
He told a travel agent that he had to visit
a sick grandfather, a story that investigators said they could
not confirm. His only contact with Australia after fling the
country concerned his severance pay he just lies to achieve
his needs. Crane said Singh's counsel did not place him

(06:15):
on the stand during the trial. Instead, Greg McGuire k
c argued that the prosecution had latched onto the wrong man.
He urged jurors to examine every component of the state's
argument with skepticism. McGuire said the Crown was essentially asking
the public to trust us trust the science, a sentiment
he believed society had grown wary of. He questioned the

(06:37):
reliability of DNA statistics, remarking that old boots could accumulate
trace DNA from countless places. He called the mobile tracking
evidence circumstantial, and pressed detectives to explain their handling of
alternative theories. At one point, he focused on local figure
Evan McRae, who had an injury in some unrelated DNA findings.

(06:59):
Police responded that every potential lead had been checked against
DNA databases and alibis. The defense stressed that no one
had witnessed the attack itself. Beach goers were not even
consistent about the one man that they thought they saw.
The defense advanced another possibility someone else had attacked and
killed Toya, and Rajvinder Singh's car merely placed him in

(07:22):
the wrong place at the wrong time. It was easy.
Mguire argued for investigators to turn a distinctive blue alpha
romeo into a focal point once it appeared in the
CCTV review. He asked the jury whether the neatness of
the Crown's theory could survive the disorder of reality, and
when asked why Rajvinder Singh had fled the country in

(07:42):
the first place, while according to his defense, he had
witnessed the attack himself and feared for his life. On
December eighth, twenty twenty five, after four in tense weeks
and roughly seven hours in deliberation, the jury reached its

(08:04):
unanimous decision. Justice Crowley read the verdict. Brajvinder Singh was
guilty of murdering Toya. Accordingly, the gallery reacted immediately. Toya's
family cried their relief, sharp and painful. Her father broke
the quiet with an enraged, grief soaked shout, Rot in hell,

(08:24):
you bastard. The convicted killer stared downward, unmoving outside. Toya's mother,
Vanessa Gardner, faced reporters. She said it was a long
awaited day for us as a family, yet not one
that she would bring herself to celebrate. Today is a
big piece of this journey that needed an ending, and
most of all, justice for our Toya, she said. She

(08:46):
described her daughter as a lovable, innocent, full of life
young woman, someone whose absence altered every corner of their lives.
We are different people now because of this tragedy. Toya's
father echoed the feeling later on, explaining that while the
verdict offered a measure of justice, nothing could restore what
they had lost. The world will always be poorer for it,

(09:09):
he said. Inspector Sonya Smith, speaking for Queensland Police, called
the investigation one of the most complex the region had
ever handled. She said it left a deep scar across
the community, and she praised detectives for their dedication over
the long years in which the case had sometimes seemed stalled.
Sentencing occurred the very next day. Justice Crowley characterized the

(09:31):
killing as violent and brutal, mourning the fact that Toya
never had a chance to know the man who ended
her life. He told the killer that the attack was shocking, sickening,
and depraved. He stressed the senselessness of it, reminding the
court that the killer and Toya never met and that
he did not know her. He then called Rajvinder Singh

(09:51):
a selfish and heartless individual who ran like a gutless
coward rather than face what he had done. Justice Crowley
offered one possible explanation for the attack. He suggested that
Toya might have stumbled upon the killer in an embarrassing
sexual and perverted act on the beach, something he believed
aligned with the intensity of the violence. He noted that

(10:12):
the killer took Toya's phone, which could indicate that he
wanted to prevent her from calling for help or recording
anything she had seen. The sentence was life imprisonment with
a minimum of twenty five years before parole could be considered,
an increase over the typical twenty year minimum for murder.
The killer's lawyer, Nick Dore, declined to say whether an

(10:33):
appeal was forthcoming. The killer himself remained silent throughout the
preceding In can the verdict brought relief. Complicated by grief,
people look back on the years they spent carrying Toya's
memory forward. Many still keep their Justice for Toya decals
on their vehicles. A small shrine at Wungetti Beach continues

(10:54):
to gather flowers to this day. If you visit, I
suggest dropping some of your own. After many years years
of uncertainty, it seems like the story of Toya, accordingly,
has finally been resolved. M m h m hmmm mm

(11:28):
hmmm mm hmmmm h