VICTIMS: Lorraine Wilson (left) and Wendy Evans disappeared in 1974. Their bodies were found bound and beaten in bushland at Murphy's Creek, near Towooomba, two years later. Source: The Courier-Mail
FOLLOW our rolling coverage of day three of the inquest into the murders of Sydney nurses Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans.
3.50pm: A police suspect in the double murder of Sydney nurses Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans in the 1970s has apologised to the women's families during a coronial inquest, before claiming he had nothing to do with the killings.
Terrance "Jimmy" O'Neill, 61, told a packed courtroom in Toowoomba he was "very sorry for the loss" of the murdered women.
"To the families of the two girls, I never had anything to do with these murders of your sisters or friends or whatever they were," he said.
"If my mates were involved in that, then I hope to Christ that it brings you closure in this court system.
"I know they're dead now but it disgraces them, or whatever it takes, anyhow.
"I'm very very sorry for your loss of those people."
Mr O'Neill was the only witness heard so far who claimed Wayne "Boogie" Hilton and Allan John "Shorty" Laurie weren't violent men.
He said he drank with them but denied going to parties with them or knocking around with them in order to "have sex with girls".
He denied going to a car racing meet at Echo Valley with Shorty Laurie, Desmond Hilton and Ungie Laurie where a woman called Margaret was raped.
Police search the area where the bodies of Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans were found in 1976 at Murphys Creek.
He also denied being present at Desmond Hilton's house when some of the gang had boasted about what they had done to the two murdered women.
"It's all complete news to me," he said.
"I swear to God I did not have anything to do with the murders."
Mr O'Neill was called to a CMC star chamber hearing to give evidence at an earlier secret hearing.
Witness Peter Rogers, 61, recalled stopping at a Shell service station in Toowoomba when a green and white Holden pulled up with three men and two women inside.
He said one of the men was known to him as Kerry Thompson.
Mr Rogers said Mr Thompson told him the women were hitchhikers and they were going to take them to a party and "show them the sights of Toowoomba".
Mr Rogers said it was the weekend before his wedding anniversary on October 9, 1974.
He said Mr Thompson told him the women were nurses and joked that he "hoped he'd break a leg".
Police searching for clues in the area where the bodies of nurses Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans were found in 1976.
He said one of the men was introduced to him as "Gordon Laurie".
He said the women were casual and one of them went to the toilet before buying soft drink at the service station.
3pm: The wife of one of the men police suspect of playing a role in the double murder of Sydney nurses Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans has denied ever speaking to him about the killings, even ahead of their appearance at an inquest this week.
Edith O'Neill told State Coroner Michael Barnes she had married Terrance "Jimmy" O'Neill in April, 1974 and given birth to their child in late September that same year.
She said they separated briefly in October "because of his drinking" and she went to live with friends Laura and Donnie Laurie, who happened to live next door to Wayne "Boogie" Hilton.
She said early one morning while she was staying there, Donnie Laurie came home "stomping" and acting "suspiciously" and she went outside for a smoke.
Mrs O'Neill said she saw Wayne "Boogie" Hilton cleaning out his car.
He said she asked him what he was doing as he appeared to take a carpet out of the back of his car with a red or brown circular stain on it.
She said he told her to go away and mind her own business.
But later that day, Mrs O'Neill said she went to look at the rolled-up rug, which had been stashed next to an incinerator in the backyard.
In a statement to police in 1989 she described the stain as blood or red dirt.
"I thought Wayne and Donnie were acting suspiciously this morning because they had been out all night," she said.
Mrs O'Neill, who sat with her arms folded in the dock, denied ever discussing the murders with her husband Terrance Jimmy O'Neill.
"He's never said nothing," she said.
Mr Barnes: "He never rejected that he was right for the murders?"
Mrs O'Neill: "He said he doesn't know anything about it and that's all I know. I don't know anything about it."
She denied that her husband had told her not to say anything to the court and said she was telling the truth.
"If I thought he was involved in anything I would say so but I don't know anything about it and he's never spoken about it," she said.
She said later in life her husband had been violent with her once he'd been drinking but he was never violent with her in 1974.
1.11pm: A woman who Donald "Donnie" Laurie lived with for four or five weeks in the late 1970s said she was sitting watching a crime show about the murders on television with him when he made some "shocking" admissions to her.
Betty Staib, who gave evidence to the Toowoomba inquest via phone, said Donnie Laurie told her things he "would have had to have actually been there" to know.
She said Donnie Laurie told her he had wanted to give the women water when they were tied to a tree at Murphys Creek for two or three days.
"I was in shock and said 'how did you know that, Laurie?'," Ms Staib said.
"He looked at me like he'd said too much and said 'I hear things'."
Ms Staib said she waited until Donnie Laurie left the house and she rang her friend Edith O'Neill, who was also Terrance "Jimmy" O'Neill's wife.
She asked Ms O'Neill whether it could be possible that Trevor Hilton and Donnie Laurie were involved in the murders.
"She said 'yeah, definitely because the day after the murders Trevor Hilton was cleaning his car out and there was blood in the back," Ms Staib said.
She said she called the police and in the days that followed, Donnie Laurie was picked up by police and questioned.
Ms Staib said she asked him why he was questioned when he arrived home that night and he told her "they just needed to ask me a few questions".
She said Donnie Laurie once offered to take her down to Murphys Creek to see the crime scene.
She told the court she refused because she feared Donnie Laurie might have tried to kill her for "knowing too much".
But later Ms Staib appeared confused about which Hilton brother she was talking about and said she couldn't be sure whether it was Wayne Boogie Hilton or Trevor Hilton.
Witness Robert Stieler, 61, told the inquest he was driving home from Toowoomba to Gatton between 8pm and 10pm one night when his car headlight's shone on Wayne Boogie Hilton "struggling" with a woman who looked like Wendy Evans at the back of a parked car.
He said the car was pulled off on the side of the Toowoomba Range and looked like a 1964 EH Holden.
"Wayne Hilton was looking straight at my car," Mr Stieler said.
He said he didn't stop because he was alone and because of Wayne Hilton's reputation "wasn't good".
"I just thought it was a domestic argument or something," he said.
12.41pm: The fourth witness told the inquest that he had watched with two friends as three men in two cars chased and "wrestled" with two women on the Toowoomba Range.
Peter Tralka, 58, told the Toowoomba Magistrates Court he saw Wayne "Boogie" Hilton and some of the Laurie brothers chase after one woman who appeared to have escaped one of two cars, midway down the range, on dusk.
He said Allan John Shorty Laurie was driving one of the two cars and he recognised another two Laurie boys from their "hare lips".
He said he followed them in his car for a distance, down past the Postman's Ridge Hall towards a waterhole.
"I thought they might have raped those women," Mr Tralka said.
But Mr Tralka said he and his two mates drove off when they were spotted by one of the men in the two cars.
"I'm no hero," he said.
He said he didn't want to call the police "when nothing happened".
11.55am: Witness Darryl Sutton told the inquest he was sitting in a car with Wayne "Boogie" Hilton, who he knew in the early 1970s, when the man began crying in the backseat.
Mr Sutton said he was sitting in a car with Wayne "Boogie" Hilton, Allan John "Shorty" Laurie and another man.
"I said 'what's the matter, Boogie?'," Mr Sutton told the court.
"He said 'I didn't mean to hurt the girls'."
Inquest Day 2: What the court heard
More: Murder confession in cold light of day
Mr Sutton said Shorty Laurie then piped up from the front seat and said: "Don't take any notice of him."
Mr Sutton said he had seen Wayne "Boogie" Hilton be violent to both men and women but added he noticed a change in his friend's behaviour after the incident in the car.
"He seemed upset all the time, he didn't seem himself," he said.
He said he was invited to party with Wayne "Boogie" Hilton but never did.
"I wasn't a 'party man'," Mr Sutton said.
He said he had seen Wayne Hilton grab women by the head, throw them around and then "punch them in the guts".
"Who was going to stand up to those boys in them days?" he said.
He said in a police statement in 2005 that Wayne Hilton carried a tyre iron around with him but he'd never seen it used to bash people up.
11.40am: Former Department of the Auditor General worker Anthony Dougherty told the inquest he saw two women who looked like Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans get into a car with two men near the Oxley Hotel on Ipswich Rd in Oxley.
He said he pinpointed the date to about 11am on October 6, 1974 and pulled up nearby with his wife, who wanted to buy a cake for a family gathering.
He said he parked in the shops opposite the Oxley Hotel when a girl walked out of another shop "looking very much like Wendy Evans".
He said she had a suitcase and sat on it out near the road.
Mr Dougherty said a second woman, who looked like Lorraine Wilson, next walked out of the shop with a man.
He said he overheard the women having an exchange.
"Lorraine was saying something like 'let's go, please come' and Wendy Evans seemed to say 'no, I don't want to'," he said.
"Then Lorraine Wilson said 'well, I'm going whether you come or not'."
Mr Dougherty told the court the woman who looked like Wendy Evans appeared to get in the car "reluctantly" before it "did a wheelie" and drove off at speed.
He said the car the women got into with the two men was a green and white EH Holden.
One of the men looked like a surfer while the other one had black hair and "a stupid grin on his face".
But when Mr Dougherty called police in 1976, after the bodies were found, the police officer he spoke to told him his information must have been wrong and the police officer wouldn't take a statement.
He said the officer told him the girls were heading to Sydney along the Pacific Highway and had been seen at Holland Park, not out near Oxley.
In 1989 Mr Dougherty contacted police again after reading a news report which said the women had been seen at Oxley.
He looked at a photo board to try and identify the men he'd seen with the women that day but was unable.
11am: Witness Trevor Hilton has told State Coroner Michael Barnes that Wayne "Boogie" Hilton, who was his sister's son and raised by his mother, associated with a "very violent" group of men who regularly preyed on young women around Toowoomba.
Mr Hilton told a coronial inquest into the double murders of Sydney nurses Lorraine Wilson, 20, and Wendy Evans, 18, that he had seen Allan John "Shorty" Laurie, Allan Neil "Ungie" Laurie, Wayne "Boogie" Hilton, Jimmy O'Neill and Kingsley Hunt pull "young Sheilas" off Ruthven St after dark.
Mr Hilton said Wayne Hilton told him he picked up young women and "raped them".
"Everybody knew it in the town what they were doing," he said.
Inquest Day 2: What the court heard
"I don't know why it wasn't stopped in them days because then those nurses would probably still be alive."
He told the court Donnie Laurie came to his aunt's house one night in early 1988 "crying and yelling" that Wayne Hilton's ex-wife had "put him in for the murders" to police.
He said Donnie Laurie fled town but returned the next day when the same woman called him up and said "come home darling, I'm missing you".
Mr Hilton said the same woman Desmond Hilton became involved with, previously Wayne Hilton's wife, had dobbed him in to police a few years earlier.
More: Murder confession in cold light of day
He said four detectives picked him up and took him down to Murphy's Creek.
But Mr Hilton said he was in jail at Palin Creek "for drink driving" when the women were murdered in 1974.
Counsel assisting Craig Chowdhury said Mr Hilton was convicted of assault occasioning bodily harm in 1975.
Mr Hilton, now 61, said he was "in and out" of jail quite often.
