{"id":323265,"date":"2025-12-02T18:21:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/323265\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T18:21:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:21:22","slug":"man-accused-of-murdering-toyah-cordingley-wanted-to-be-needle-in-a-haystack-in-india-court-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/323265\/","title":{"rendered":"Man accused of murdering Toyah Cordingley wanted to be ‘needle in a haystack’ in India, court hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rajwinder Singh abandoned his wife and three young children to become a “needle in a haystack” in India after killing Cairns woman Toyah Cordingley, a court has heard.<\/p>\n

The former nurse has pleaded not guilty to the murder of the 24-year-old at the Far North Queensland beach where she had gone to walk her dog.<\/p>\n

Ms Cordingley\u2019s father Troy found his daughter’s body buried in sand at Wangetti beach on October 22, 2018, the morning after she is believed to have died.<\/p>\n

Crown prosecutor Nathan Crane has begun his closing address to the jury in Mr Singh’s trial at the Supreme Court in Cairns, which has heard evidence from more than 80 witnesses across three weeks.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Rajwinder Singh has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Queensland woman Toyah Cordingley. (ABC News: Paula Broughton)<\/p>\n

Mr Crane told the jury the 41-year-old former nurse’s hurried departure from Australia \u2014 leaving behind “three beautiful children” \u2014 was the “ultimate sacrifice” he made for his freedom.<\/p>\n

“Drastic conduct for the most drastic act,” Mr Crane told the court.<\/p>\n

The Case Of Toyah’s Murder<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen back to how Rajwinder Singh’s trial unfolded and all the key moments from the courtroom with the ABC’s podcast, The Case Of Toyah’s Murder.<\/p>\n

Mr Singh’s family were “all financially dependent upon him”, the court heard, but he left without saying goodbye and was not heard from at all during the more than four years he spent in his homeland.<\/p>\n

“[There were] no birthday cards, no ‘here’s some money’, no ‘how’s the kids?’, no secret messages about ‘I’m hiding out here till’ it all blows over’,” Mr Crane told the jury.<\/p>\n

“It [was] just crickets.”<\/p>\n

The jury has heard audio of Mr Singh booking his flights to India the day after Ms Cordingley was killed.<\/p>\n

Motive ‘not an element of the offence’<\/p>\n

Mr Crane told the jury they did not need to know what led to the confrontation with Ms Cordingley to conclude Mr Singh had murdered her.<\/p>\n

“[Motive] is not an element of the offence,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We don’t always know what’s in the mind of the person who does these things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There are things we just won’t have an answer about unless the killer told us.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Amar Singh, the father of Rajwinder Singh, gave evidence in his son’s trial. (ABC News: Conor Byrne)<\/p>\n

Mr Singh’s wife, parents, sister, and a close friend all gave evidence at trial.<\/p>\n

But Mr Crane told the court the people who knew Mr Singh best “don’t know what’s in his mind”.<\/p>\n

“[They] don’t know what his urges are, and they don’t know what he’s done to suppress them,” he told the jury.<\/p>\n

Mr Crane pointed to CCTV footage the jury had seen of Mr Singh “yawning at the security gate” as he left the country.<\/p>\n

“Is he someone who just has the ability to appear like he doesn’t have a care in the world?”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Toyah Cordingley’s body was found at Wangetti Beach.\u00a0 (ABC Far North: Brendan Mounter)<\/p>\n

With no eyewitnesses to Ms Cordingley’s death, Mr Crane said the Crown relied on a series of circumstantial facts in combination to prove its case.<\/p>\n

They include the nature of Mr Singh’s departure from the country, the high likelihood his DNA was present where Ms Cordingley was buried, and her phone and his car moving together away from the scene.<\/p>\n

Accused’s story doesn’t explain DNA, court told<\/p>\n

The court has heard it was 3.7 billion times more likely than not that Mr Singh’s DNA was on a stick in the sand where Ms Cordingley was buried in a shallow grave.<\/p>\n

Mr Crane said even Mr Singh’s version of events, given in a covertly recorded conversation with an undercover police officer, did not explain that DNA result.<\/p>\n

“Mr Singh does not put himself at this location,” Mr Crane told the jury.<\/p>\n

“He says he was on the beach and saw something from a distance and got away and was not caught.”<\/p>\n

\"Toyah<\/p>\n

Toyah Cordingley was 24 when she died. (Facebook: Toyah Cordingley)<\/p>\n

Mr Crane said Mr Singh could have washed himself off in the water after the attack and returned to his car without anybody taking notice.<\/p>\n

He said Mr Singh could have used Ms Cordingley’s things to touch logs placed at her burial location “if he did not want to touch them himself”.<\/p>\n

Mr Singh left the beach and headed back toward Cairns without taking the most direct route home, Mr Crane said.<\/p>\n

The Crown case is Mr Singh took Ms Cordingley’s possessions \u2014 including her phone \u2014 and disposed of them.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Police investigating the death of Ms Cordingley identified Rajwinder Singh through the movements of his blue Alfa Romeo. (Supplied: Queensland Police Service)<\/p>\n

“He bolts across two lanes of traffic because he had a thought, and where did the thought take him?” Mr Crane told the jury.<\/p>\n

“It took him to Lake Placid, where they can’t actually look for stuff because there are crocs.”<\/p>\n

Ms Cordingley’s phone’s final connection with a phone tower occurred at Caravonica about 5:17pm, moments before Mr Singh made the Lake Placid detour.<\/p>\n

\"map<\/p>\n

A map showing the connections Ms Cordingley’s phone made with cell towers after her death, according to prosecutors.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Mr Crane said the accuracy of the “timing advance” technology the prosecution relied upon to establish the location and movement of Ms Cordingley’s phone away from Wangetti Beach was essential.<\/p>\n

“The path of Toyah Cordingley’s phone matters, in my submission, because the only person in the world who could have [the phone] was the killer,” he said.<\/p>\n

About three hours after the final connection from Ms Cordingley’s phone, Mr Singh’s phone suddenly became active after seven hours without any records.<\/p>\n

“His phone is not dead because half an hour before he gets home, his phone switches back on and there’s a data entry,” Mr Crane said.<\/p>\n

“Like someone looking at whether what he’s done has been discovered yet.”<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Rajwinder Singh’s wife Sukhdeep Kaur gave evidence in her husband’s trial. (ABC News: Paula Broughton)<\/p>\n

Mr Singh arrived home about 8:45pm that night, after the time his wife told the court she always went to sleep.<\/p>\n

‘Only you know the facts’<\/p>\n

Mr Crane said police received more than 3,000 pieces of information to follow up in their investigation into Ms Cordingley’s death.<\/p>\n

The defence has pointed to the presence of men with histories of violence or mental illness in Far North Queensland as possible competing explanations for the murder.<\/p>\n

Closing arguments to begin in Toyah Cordingley murder trial<\/a><\/p>\n

The jury in the former Innisfail nurse’s murder trial has heard more than three weeks of evidence.<\/p>\n

Mr Singh’s lawyers have mentioned \u2014 and in some cases cross-examined \u2014 other people whose movements were probed by police following Ms Cordingley’s death.<\/p>\n

“The police found the evidence to actually exclude them from being anywhere near Toyah Cordingley at that point in time,” Mr Crane said.<\/p>\n

He told the jury it would be “astounding [to suggest] the police in this town would not want to solve that crime”.<\/p>\n

The jury was told to ignore “silly things that people say” and focus solely on evidence presented at trial.<\/p>\n

\"Toyah<\/p>\n

Police received more than 3,000 pieces of information to follow up in their investigation into Ms Cordingley’s death. (Facebook: Toyah Cordingley)<\/p>\n

“You’re the only ones who have heard the facts, you’re the only ones who have heard the explanations, you’re the only ones who can be in a position to understand the science behind some of the evidence,” Mr Crane told the court.<\/p>\n

Defence barrister Greg McGuire KC will address the jury at the conclusion of Mr Crane’s address, which is due to continue on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Justice Lincoln Crowley will then sum up the case before deliberations begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rajwinder Singh abandoned his wife and three young children to become a “needle in a haystack” in India…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[72,181931,2973,43,55313,2968,44,159982,41,39,42,40,159981,1109,160851],"class_list":{"0":"post-323265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-cairns","9":"tag-closing-arguments","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-jury","13":"tag-murder","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-rajwinder-singh","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-toyah-cordingley","21":"tag-trial","22":"tag-wangetti-beach"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}