For Sunday Telegraph. Eric Wilson of Winmalee. His sister was Lorraine brutally murdered in 1974. Last known photo of Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans. Picture: Angelo Soulas Source: The Sunday Telegraph
AN inquest into the brutal unsolved murder of two nurses has heard suspected killers from two tight-knit families boasted of giving two girls "a hiding" on the night they vanished.
The bashed and bound bodies of Sydney-based trainee nurses Wendy Evans, 18, and Lorraine Wilson, 20, were found in 1976 in remote bushland at Murphys Creek, at the foot of the Great Dividing Range near Toowoomba in south-east Queensland.
They had disappeared two years earlier while hitch-hiking from Brisbane to Dubbo and the baffling double murder has never been solved.
However, state Coroner Michael Barnes has today in Toowoomba opened a fresh inquest into the killings. At least five suspects - from two families well-known to local police - have been identified and the three still alive will give evidence to the inquest.
Today, a tape recorded police interview from 2008 with one of the men, Desmond Roy Hilton, was played. In it, he admits a group of six men - including his now-dead cousin Wayne Hilton - asked him to wash blood out of the backseat and boot of their car in 1974.
The inquest has heard this occurred on the morning of Sunday September 7, the day after the women farewelled their family in Brisbane.
In the tape-recorded interview, Mr Hilton says he was a drunk and was friends with a group of men - mostly members of the Hilton and Laurie families - who regularly bashed people on weekends.
He recalled the men visiting him at home on that day and bragging they had given two girls "a hiding at the bottom of the range" the night before.
Mr Hilton was then asked to hose out the back seat and boot of the Holden sedan of blood, which he said was not an uncommon occurrence given the men's violent pastimes.
"Every weekend they would bash someone...there was always blood on the bloody cars," he said.
However, he said he did not know the girls had died until he read about the case in the newspaper much later. He said his cousin Wayne Hilton and another man, Donald Laurie, told him they always feared they would be charged over the nurses' murders but said they never made direct admissions to him they were responsible.
Both Hilton and Laurie are now dead.
Former police officer Paul Ruge, who based in Toowoomba in the late 1980s, told the inquest that if Wayne Hilton was alive when he was investigating the matter in 1988-89, he would have charged him with murder. He said the Laurie and Hilton families were well-known in Toowoomba and had a bad reputation.
"If the Lauries and Hilltons were around, if you didn't want to get into trouble, it would be a good idea for you to go home," Mr Ruge said.
Desmond Hilton is scheduled to give evidence on Wednesday. The inquest heard he is still suspect for being an accessory after the fact of the murders.
The hearing continues.
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