Chronology of a Murder Part 2: The Port Douglas connection
Toyah Cordingley case
What follows is the second part in a chronology of the murder of Toyah Cordingley based on statements made to the Cairns Supreme Court in February and March, 2025.
In late March a hung jury could not decide if accused murderer Rajwinder Singh killed former Paws and Claws volunteer Toyah Cordingley at Wangetti Beach, and a retrial was ordered for Monday, November 10.
This is a three-part chronological retelling of what the court heard during the first three-week trial:
The last text message Toyah Cordingley sent from her phone on Sunday, October 21, 2018, was at 3.17pm that day, letting her partner Marco Heidenreich know she was intending to pick up her friend Tyson from the airport later that day, which included a red love heart.
But Mr Heidenreich told the court he did not see that text until he was at Wangetti Beach looking for her later on that night, and the message was the first he had ever heard of Mr Franklin.
The phone signal at Wangetti Beach is notoriously poor, but it is not clear if this played any part in events.
Ms Cordingley is believed to have been murdered on the beach sometime between 3.30pm and 6.30pm.
Meanwhile, Mr Heidenreich drove up from Cairns sometime before 3pm to visit friends and walk his own dog, Jersey, saying he saw his partner’s car in the Wangetti Beach carpark when he drove past that afternoon.
CCTV footage shows Mr Heidenreich stopping at a petrol station while driving north to Port Douglas to go hiking with his long-term friend Joel Cuman - who he met in primary school - and security-camera footage showed him at about 3pm at the Courthouse Hotel bottle shop in Port Douglas buying a six pack of beer.
Photos from Mr Cuman’s phone showed them hiking near Mowbray later that day, although the court heard time signatures can be changed on photos by people who know what they are doing, and Mr Cuman told the court he knew how to change metadata in photographs, but did not do that.
Mr Heidenreich told the court, after he drove to Port Douglas that day, he went on a hike at Spring Creek near Mowbray with Mr Cuman, but spent hours searching for his missing dog along the region’s waterfall track.
Mr Cuman told the court Mr Heidenreich had picked him up in the afternoon and they hiked along the Spring Creek waterfall track, with Jersey going missing near the bottom of the trail.
The court also heard at least two other men were known to be on Wangetti Beach on the day, including one “who sneaks around watching women from the sand dunes on the northern beaches” and one who lied to police about his movements that day.
Tiler Evan McCrea told the court he voluntarily contacted police partly in response to a warning from his ex-wife that he could become a suspect in the murder, despite his mother Diane McCrea giving evidence that he was with her and his children that weekend.
Mr McCrea had been going through a distressing separation, with his estranged wife reportedly telling Queensland Police Detective Sergeant Graham Camp he can go into "deep depressions where he is dangerous".
A series of text messages read to the court from October 18, a few days before Ms Cordingley was killed, recorded Mr McCrea expressing a desire to “go pigging to kill something".
He told the court he used to go pigging at Wangetti Beach, but he did not do that on the day Ms Cordingley was killed.
His mother said he had stayed at her home with his children from 1-5pm Sunday afternoon, and he normally took his children back to her mother at about 5pm.
Police tracked the movements of Mr McCrea through CCTV and traffic-camera images, with footage showing him with and without his children at several locations including Smithfield roundabout, Smithfield shopping centre and Thomatis Creek across the weekend.
Traffic camera footage shown in court revealed Mr McCrea's ute driving north from Cairns to Smithfield Shopping Centre at about 5.20pm before he was seen heading back to Cairns.
The court also heard conflicting evidence about schoolteacher Remy Fry, who said he was visiting his mum and other friends at Wangetti on the day of the murder.
Mr Fry said he spent "three or so hours" socialising with two friends, but one of those people, Peter Lincoln, said Mr Fry did not visit him that afternoon.
Others to give evidence in court included Port Douglas friends Brett Liddell and Nicola Hatt, who said they went to Wangetti Beach for 15-20 minutes from 4-5pm on the day of Ms Cordingley’s death.
Mr Liddell told the court that, at one stage during that time, he saw a man emerge from the bushes carrying a “professional-looking” camera with a large lens.
Back at Spring Creek, Mr Cuman and Mr Heidenreich said they searched the area for the missing dog until dark, then visited two different friends’ houses in the Port Douglas area looking for a torch to borrow.
That afternoon, despite her death, Ms Cordingley’s phone movements were later recorded at Buchan Point between 4.51pm and 5.17pm, then near Kewarra Beach, followed by Smithfield.
There were no more records from 5.17pm, which the court heard likely meant the phone was either shut down or ran out of battery.
According to phone records tabled in the court, Ms Cordingley’s phone had connected with towers at Buchan Point, Island Point and Port Douglas in the afternoon, around the time when Ms Cordingley was believed to be walking her dog Indie at Wangetti Beach.
The court heard Ms Cordingley may not have left Wangetti Beach ever again, but her phone did, and it was moving in sync with Mr Singh’s Alfa.
Continued tomorrow 8am - Chronology of a Murder Part 3: The killing of Toyah Cordingley
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