After the body of Toyah Cordingley was found in an isolated beach seven years ago, former nurse Rajwinder Singh has been convicted of her murder.
In 2018, shortly before fleeing to India, Cordingley was stabbed severely by Singh, who sliced her throat at a Far North Queensland beach, before substantial time in hiding before he made his escape.
Australian woman found dead in 2018
A day after she did not come back with her dog, Cordingley, 24, was found by her father half-buried in sand dunes at the Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns.
Toyah was the daughter of Vanessa Gardiner, who said that her family would never forget her daughter – or forgive Singh. (Nine)
The pet dog -the name of which was Indie- was discovered alive nearby, stretched to the tree.
The years went by when the grieved family of Coringley was waiting to find the answers.
It was worth a record $1 million reward, and two trials, but it eventually happened when a jury gave a unanimous verdict at the Supreme Court in Cairns in the later part of Monday.
The incident caused the world of Cordingley and many other people to be upside down over the course of years and everybody remembers that a special section of our fun and tight knit family is no more and will never be again, as the mother of Cordingley Vanessa Gardiner said in front of the court.
This tragedy has changed us to different people.
Toyah Cordingley Verdict: Family Says ‘We Will Never Forget or Forgive’
It is still difficult to believe that she is not with us physically these days and the horrible manner in which she was taken out of our lives.
In reply, Gardiner said her family would never forget Coringley or forgive Singh. It will always come down to wondering what might have been had she not had her life so shortened, she said.
You will never be forgiven by us, as far as the man who did this murder and made her endure a dreadful death to our daughter.
After approximately seven hours of deliberations, the four week re-trial came to an end.
Eight months ago, Singh was found guilty in a hung jury in his first trial. On October 21, 2018, Cordingley had brought her dog to the Wangetti Beach.
Her family is the one who sounded the alarm when she failed to report back before her father made the gory discovery the following morning, some 80 metres away her car. The police alleged that Cordingley died of a personal and intimate assault.
The family of Toyah made the alarm after the girl failed to come back before her father discovered the grisly find the following day, 80 metres along the way of her vehicle.
Who Is Rajwinder Singh?
There was an online onslaught of tributes to the gentile, humble and loving Cordingley, an organic food store worker who was also a volunteer at an animal shelter.
Her funeral at a small chapel in the Cairns suburb of Manunda was attended by about 350 people. Shortly after the body was discovered, Singh, an Innisfail nurse some 1 hour south of Cairns left Australia.
He spent time in India his mother country where he had boarded a flight and left behind his wife and three children. The federal government granted the extradition warrant against Singh in March 2021, granted by the police on their suspicion that he had killed Cordingley with a stab.
In November 3, 2022, the Queensland government declared the biggest reward in the history of the state to find Singh and arrest him, a payout of 1 million.
Singh was later arrested in New Delhi weeks after the reward had been announced. In March 2023 he was extradited to Australia and accused of murder.
He denied killing the woman and said that he wanted to share all the details with an Australian court. New Delhi Singh was arrested some weeks after a reward of 1 million dollars was announced.
Queensland police later attested that it paid out the 1 million dollar reward to several individuals. Without Toyah, the world was a worse place according to her father Troy Cordingley. The verdict today has brought a kind of justice but justice to us can never be such, he said.
