Murder on Easey Street

1977, Collingwood. Two young women are brutally murdered. The killer has never been found. What happened in the house on Easey Street?On a warm night in January, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were savagely murdered in their house on Easey Street, Collingwood stabbed multiple times while Suzanne s sixteen-month-old baby slept in his cot. Although police established a list of more than 100 persons of interest , the case became one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in Melbourne. Journalist Helen Thomas was a cub reporter at The Age when the murders were committed and saw how deeply they affected the city. Now, forty-two years on, she has re-examined the cold case chasing down new leads and talking to members of the Armstrong and Bartlett families, the women s neighbours on Easey Street, detectives and journalists. What emerges is a portrait of a crime rife with ambiguities and contradictions, which took place at a fascinating time in the city s history when the countercultural bohemia of Helen Garner s Monkey Grip brushed up against the grit of the underworld in one of Melbourne s most notorious suburbs. Why has the Easey Street murderer never been found, despite the million-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest? Did the women know their killer, or were their deaths due to a random, frenzied attack? Could the murderer have killed again? This gripping account addresses these questions and more as it sheds new light on one of Australia s most disturbing and compelling criminal mysteries. An overdue examination of the Easey Street murders that adds tantalising new information to known and forgotten facts. Andrew Rule, journalist and co-author of Underbelly Helen Thomas meticulous examination [is] chilling reading. The Age