Desperately Wanted... Australian Police Arrest Murder Suspect After 47 Years of Pursuit

65-Year-Old Male Dual Citizen of Greece and Australia Arrested
Accused of Brutally Killing Two Women in 1977

The suspect in the 'Easy Street Murder Case,' one of Australia's most notorious long-unsolved cases, was apprehended after relentless pursuit by Australian police, nearly half a century later.

On the 22nd (local time), ANSA, AP News, and others reported that Italian police arrested a 65-year-old man with dual Greek and Australian citizenship at Rome's Fiumicino International Airport on the 19th.

Susan Armstrong and Susan Vallet, who were murdered in Melbourne in January 1977.
[Image source=Victoria Police, Australia X (formerly Twitter)]

The man is accused of brutally murdering Susan Armstrong (28 at the time) and Susan Vallet (27 at the time) with a bladed weapon in a house on Easy Street, Melbourne, Australia, in January 1977. The two women, who were classmates, were found by a neighbor three days after the murders. Fortunately, Armstrong's 16-month-old son at the time was unharmed.

Australian police secured the perpetrator's DNA data and investigated 130 suspects. However, they failed to solve the case, and in 1999, 22 years after the incident, DNA tests were conducted on eight prime suspects, but this also yielded no results.

However, Australian police did not give up. In 2017, they even promised a reward of 1 million Australian dollars (about 900 million KRW) to a key informant. After persistent investigation, Australian police found a lead to capture the suspect. They identified a man who refused to submit a DNA sample in 2017 and fled to Greece as a prime suspect and tracked his whereabouts for years.

Since Greece has a 20-year statute of limitations for murder cases, even if this man was the perpetrator, he could not be prosecuted due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. However, Italy was different. Italy has no statute of limitations for multiple murders or murders related to sexual crimes. Australian police, waiting for this man to leave Greece, received information that he had departed and, in cooperation with Italian police, arrested him immediately after he landed at Fiumicino Airport.

Meanwhile, Australian police have initiated legal procedures to extradite the man, including requesting extradition from Italian authorities.