Toyah Cordingley's body was found on a beach after she took her dog for a walk. Photo / Facebook Supplied
Toyah Cordingley's body was found on a beach after she took her dog for a walk. Photo / Facebook Supplied
A council worker stumbles on a young woman's bound and beaten body partially covered in leaves near playground equipment in Sydney's prestigious Hunters Hill.
A trail of drag marks stretching up to 30m leads to the killer's dumping ground, where the grisly discovery is made just before 7.30am on October 3.
Nicole Cartwright's wrists are bound in front of her lifeless body. The 32-year-old is dressed in the same clothes she was wearing when she was last seen alive on September 30. There are no immediate clues as to who killed her or why.
Two-and-a-half weeks later and thousands of kilometres away, another horrific discovery is about to be made, in the most tragic of circumstances. Toyah Cordingley's father Troy leads one of several search parties for his 24-year-old daughter after she disappeared while walking her dog on Wangetti Beach, about 40km north of Cairns, Far North Queensland, on October 21.
After hours of desperately scouring the pristine beach for clues, he comes across his daughter's slain body, callously dumped among the sand dunes the following day. What he sees is so traumatic he has to be carried away. Queensland Police later reveal Ms Cordingley had sustained "visible, violent injuries" before her death.
Just over 24 hours earlier she was captured on CCTV cameras near Rusty's Markets in Cairns. The cameras clocked the time at 12.40pm. It was the last known time Ms Cordingley was seen alive. Queensland homicide detectives are left scratching their heads. Two months on, there are still no answers as to who killed her or why.
There is no suggestion that the murders of Ms Cartwright and Ms Cordingley are connected. But while both remain unsolved, it's a race against time to track their killers down and ensure they can't strike again. NSW Police didn't respond to a request for comment regarding Ms Cartwright's murder. A Queensland Police spokesman told news.com.au there have not been any "substantial developments" in Ms Cordingley's case.
WHO KILLED NICOLE CARTWRIGHT?
Nicole Cartwright's body was found at Hunter's Hill, NSW, on October 3, 2018. Photo / Supplied
Nicole Cartwright, 32, was living with her parents in Lansvale, southwest Sydney, prior to her murder. But they weren't to know that when Ms Cartwright walked out the door on September 30 she would never walk back in again. The details surrounding exactly what happened to Ms Cartwright in her final moments remain sketchy.
Her Opal card history has placed her on buses and at various railway stations across the city between September 27 and September 30. She was last seen alive when she was captured on CCTV at Museum station at 9.14pm on September 30. Her body was found at Buffalo Hill Creek reserve in Hunters Hill on Sydney's lower north on October 3.
Police found a number of the dead woman's personal belongings at the crime scene but have failed to recover her mobile phone, hampering efforts to establish her movements between September 30 and October 3.
After a council worker discovered Ms Cartwright's body, police were called to the site off Pittwater Rd, Hunters Hill.
"At the time she was located, she was wearing a dark jacket with a hood and a black and white dress with long black pants underneath," Homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Scott Cook previously said.
"She also had a pair of black boots on and a purple collar. The clothing is consistent with the clothing she had at Museum Railway Station and the clothing she had in her possession at the time.
"She was covered in some leaves and bark. We're not sure when she was placed there.
"We don't have a cause of death at this stage but she did suffer injuries; suffice to say they're consistent with assault. She was bound, with hands in front of her body."
Nicole Cartwright's cause of death still hasn't been established. Photo / Supplied
Ms Cartwright had a wide circle of friends, often spending time in Sydney's CBD, eastern suburbs and surrounds.
Police have trawled through her mobile phone data and records for clues but refused to reveal what, if anything, had been found.
She didn't own a vehicle, but frequently travelled on public transport around the Sydney area.
Police have established Strike Force Winkurra to investigate the circumstances surrounding her death.
WHO KILLED TOYAH CORDINGLEY?
Toyah Cordingley's body was found on a beach after she took her dog for a walk. Photo / Facebook Supplied
Cairns pharmacy assistant and animal rescue worker Toyah Cordingley, 24, was last seen at Rusty's Markets, a popular fresh fruit and vegetable market in the Cairns CBD, where it is believed she went shopping between noon and 1pm, on Sunday, October 21.
About an hour later, she took her dog for a walk in broad daylight along a 4km-long stretch of beach, halfway between Cairns and Port Douglas, and vanished.
The next morning, her body was discovered in the dunes by her father, Troy Cordingley, who was leading a search party at Wangetti Beach.
Her "larger than average dog", identified as a german shepherd cross great dane mastiff, was found tied up nearby.
It remains unclear who murdered Ms Cordingley, how she was killed or why.
Despite receiving hundreds of pieces of information from the public since launching an investigation into Ms Cordingley's death, police are still scouring for clues.
Forensic dogs and SES volunteers combed the beach, a day after police doorknocked homes near the beach and requested DNA samples.
"They're just elimination samples … purely voluntary," Detective Inspector Sonia Smith told reporters at the time.
"We need to get answers for Toyah's family."
Toyah Cordingley's body was found at Wangetti Beach, Queensland, on October 22, 2018. Photo / Facebook Supplied
Over the weekend, Ms Cordingley's stepfather Darren Gardiner shared the heartache of having the 24-year-old's car returned home after several weeks of police examinations.
Mr Gardiner posted a series of five photos online, telling of the special memories and stories attached to each, and revealed how the family was living a "nightmare".
"Now that the police have finished with Toyah's car it has been delivered on a tilt tray truck to our house," he wrote.
"Normally she would pull up in the driveway and the dog would go nuts because it knew the attention it was going to receive from Toyah and having her come back home to visit us was always a special time for our family.
"But this has all changed now because six weeks ago she was walking her dog mid-afternoon on Wangetti Beach without a care in the world but someone took it upon themselves to brutally murder her and bury her."
Mr Gardiner said all he and Ms Cordingley's mother and father were left with physically of their beloved daughter was "a box with her ashes in it".
"Nothing can bring her back; memories, photos, videos are all we have now," he said.
"l hope through all this it is starting to put some pressure on some people to do the right thing and help us get the only thing left for us and Toyah and that's some justice."
Police are hunting for the drivers of 68 unidentified vehicles seen in the area at the time of her death and have appealed for people to come forward. They have sought everyone from regular users of the Wangetti car park at the southern end of the beach, to those who may have interacted with Ms Cordingley when she visited Rusty's Markets on the Sunday between midday and 1pm, and motorists with dashcam footage from October 21 on the Captain Cook Highway between the beach's northern and southern car parks.
Police later released a list of vehicles travelling south on the Captain Cook Highway near Clifton Rd around 5pm on October 21, urging the drivers to come forward in the hope they could hold key information that could crack the case.
Crime Stoppers has held displays at the Rusty's Markets in Cairns and at Wangetti Beach in the hopes it will jog the memory of any other witnesses. But so far, to no avail.
The last known pictures of Mr Cordingley alive show her handing out samples of camel dairy milk at Barr St Markets, a wholefood store and pharmacy in Cairns, the day before her death.
Toyah Cordingley ran a camel dairy stall at the Barr St Markets in Earlville the day before her death. Photo Supplied
Just before she was reported missing, the Wholehealth Pharmacy and Healthfoods retail business shared images of the blonde-haired woman wearing a green uniform shirt, black pants and a black cloth headband while pouring tasting cups for customers.
In the images, Ms Cordingley didn't appear to have a care in the world. She had no way of knowing the sheer horror that awaited her.
