Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
On the gorgeous afternoon of Sunday, October 21, 2018, 24-year-old Toyah Cordingley stopped off at Rusty’s Market in Cairns, Australia before heading north to take her Husky-Tibetan mastiff mix, Indie, for a walk at Wangetti Beach in Queensland. The spectacularly beautiful beach is a 2.5 mile (4 km) hidden stretch of sand that’s situated halfway between Cairns & Port Douglas surrounded by mountains, palm trees & the sparkling waters of the Coral Sea along the Great Barrier Reef.
Although many travel far & wide to see such spectacular scenery, this was a place Toyah called home. She lived & worked in Cairns, sharing a home with her boyfriend, Marco Heidenreich & working as a pharmacy assistant at a health food store/pharmacy. She also volunteered at an animal shelter in Port Douglas.
The area was perfect for Toyah who was a lover of animals & the outdoors. She embraced the landscape of her home, swimming among the waterfalls & letting her beloved Indie off her leash so she could run free along the beach.
Although the picturesque beach where she headed that Sunday was secluded, it wasn’t isolated. Mountains covered in tropical rainforest loom above the shoreline while at either end of the beach, traffic along the highway connecting Cairns to Port Douglas can be heard in the distance. Many families & tourists visit the location to spend their weekends walking, searching for shells or having a bonfire along the sand.
Since Toyah had a cat that was buried at Wangetti Beach, it was a sentimental place for her to visit. Sadly, it was along this very stretch of sand where a stranger would attack her & leave her to die. No one saw him strike & no one saw him get away so it would be up to investigators to put the pieces together to solve this case.
Toyah was a beautiful young woman who touched the lives of many, including the cats & dogs she cared for at the Paws & Claws animal shelter where she volunteered her time. Her calm presence managed to quiet even the most distressed, boisterous animals with ease.
She had so much to look forward to; she was getting ready to start a new job & her friend Megan had only just asked her to be her bridesmaid. She was close with her tight-knit family & everyone saw her as the glue that kept them connected.
On October 3, 2018, Toyah posted to Facebook about her role as a bridesmaid, writing, It is more than a pleasure to share these moments & watch as our lives change with each new adventure. Tragically, less than three weeks later, her life would be taken & the lives of those who loved her would be forever changed.
According to Marco, when Toyah left their Cairns home at 1:30 pm that Sunday afternoon to head to the beach to walk Indie, she hadn’t been sure of which beach she was going to at the time. When he left about 15-18 minutes later to drive to Port Douglas to see a friend, he passed Wangetti Beach & noticed her car parked there, but he didn’t stop.
When she hadn’t come home by that night & Marco was unable to reach her, he headed back to Wangetti Beach & found her unlocked Mitsubishi Lancer still parked there. He dialed triple-0 at 10:50 pm & contacted her family, who helped him search the beach for her.
When investigators began looking into Toyah’s cell phone records, they learned that the last text she sent had been at 3:17 pm to Marco, letting him know that she was planning to pick her friend Tyson up from the airport later that day. The message included a red love heart. However, Marco hadn’t seen the message until later that night after he realized she was missing. When he finally did read the text, he had no idea who Tyson was.
The man in question was Tyson Franklin, Toyah’s new friend, who worked as a podiatrist. The two met earlier that month when she came into his podiatry clinic for an appointment. During her visit, they did a Harry Potty quiz together & exchanged numbers, saving each other’s information in their contacts as Gryffindor & Slytherin. Soon, they were exchanging hundreds of messages a day & in one, Toyah described the timing of their meeting as pesky, due to her relationship with Marco.
When she hadn’t arrived at the airport to pick him up as planned, Tyson called her multiple times, but after he was unable to reach her, he took an Uber home, something that CCTV proved to be accurate.
Later analysis of Toyah’s cell phone indicated that it tracked moving from Cairns to Wangetti Beach before a data gap from 2:07 pm to 3:49 pm. What happened during this hour & 42 minutes is a mystery. Although she sent a text to Marco during this timeframe, as mentioned before, he didn’t see the text until later that night when he was there looking for her. Because cell service at this beach is notoriously poor, it’s unclear if that played a role in any of the events surrounding this case.
When Marco left the house that afternoon, he went to pick up Joel Cuman, someone he had been friends with since primary school. CCTV footage showed him stopping at a gas station on his way north to Port Douglas. At about 3 pm, he stopped off at the Courthouse Hotel bottle shop in Port Douglas to buy a six-pack of beer. Marco & Joel then went to hike at nearby Spring Creek with his dog, Jersey.
Photos from his phone depicted them hiking, but unfortunately, while they were there, Marco lost Jersey & he & Joel ended up searching for him for hours along the area’s waterfall track. They continued to search for the dog even as night fell, leaving the area to stop by two different friends’ houses to borrow a flashlight.
Marco & Joel continued to search for Jersey until about 9 pm that night, but they were sadly unable to find him. After they left the Spring Creek area, Marco indicated that he brought the flashlight back to his friend’s house & they had a drink together.
Jersey wasn’t found for another three days after backpackers came upon him. Thankfully, other than damaged foot pads, he was otherwise unharmed.
Not only was Marco worried for his dog’s safety, but he was also extremely concerned about Toyah’s wellbeing since she hadn’t come home & he had been unable to reach her. After 7 pm, he called her more than ten times, but each call went straight to voicemail suggesting that her phone was off.
Increasingly concerned, he drove over to Wangetti Beach & found Toyah’s unlocked car in the parking lot. This was when he decided to call triple-0 & notify her family. Vanessa Gardiner, Toyah’s mom, recalls being woken up in the early morning hours of Monday morning from a phone call from her 18-year-old son, Jack, who informed her that Toyah was missing.
Toyah’s parents, Vanessa Gardiner & Troy Cordingley, separated when she was young & each went on to remarry. That night, they met Marco at Wangetti Beach at 3 am & spent hours searching for her as well as Indie. They walked along the shoreline, calling out her name, but because it was so dark outside it was difficult to see, so they sat at a picnic bench waiting for the sun to rise so they could properly search for Toyah.
As the sun came up, Vanessa found Indie tied tightly to a tree in the bushland near the dense shrubbery that bordered the beach. The leash had been tied so tightly that she’d been unable to even sit down.
Meanwhile, Troy continued to search for their daughter until he sat down to take a quick break under some trees about 30 meters from where Indie was found & about 800 meters from where Toyah’s car had been parked. This was when he noticed an unusual mound of sand so he dropped to his knees & scooped the sand away three times until he suddenly saw a foot.
Shocked & horrified, he reeled back & began yelling out for help. Toyah was found wearing her bikini with no phone, wallet, bag or towel while her hat was located nearby. Police later found two bloodstained patches of sand nearby Toyah’s shallow grave.
The medical examiner found a nearly 7 inch (17 cm) extraordinarily deep neck wound that had been inflicted in at least four separate movements that completely cut her trachea, or windpipe. Dr. Botterill found sand with blood going into her lungs, evidence that suggested Toyah had still been alive when the wound was inflicted.
There were also serious stab wounds to her neck, chest & less serious wounds to her right breast & lower back as well as abrasions to her face, torso & thighs. She had been stabbed at least 26 times & based on the defensive wounds to her fingers, hands & forearm, she had fought back hard. There were no drugs or alcohol in her system & no evidence of a sexual assault.
An investigation began immediately & Crime Stoppers was inundated with tips from people who believed they may have seen something. There were 1,400 reports & police took more than 500 witness statements. Various persons of interest had been spoken to, their phone records were obtained, forensics analyzed & their movements investigated.
Officers asked locals to volunteer DNA samples & hand over their knives for forensic testing. A stick that was found at the site where Toyah had been buried came back with a strong male profile that matched no one connected to the case.
About three weeks after Toyah’s murder, police made an announcement that would turn their investigation into an international manhunt. For four long years Toyah’s murder captivated an entire community who were desperate for answers. The fact that a young woman’s life could be taken while she had been doing something so many people did, walking along a beach in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, horrified so many people.
Phone records revealed not only the calls & texts that Toyah made, but also which towers she connected to & when. While her body had been concealed in a shallow grave, her phone connected to three cell towers that afternoon in a direction heading away from the beach. This gave investigators a timeframe & direction to work with.
Traffic cameras were scoured as was CCTV of the cars that traveled along the Captain Cook Highway that Sunday afternoon. In early November, they received more detailed phone data called timing advance, that gave them an estimated distance & direction Toyah’s phone was from the towers it connected with.
This information gave them a much more specific timeframe that narrowed their search to a five-minute window at a particular intersection. Pictures of 70 cars were made public while drivers were encouraged to come forward & identify themselves.
About half did while many more were excluded from the investigation when police checked traffic cameras & determined that they drove in a direction that didn’t match the movement of Toyah’s phone.
One that did match the direction her phone traveled was a distinctive blue Alfa Romeo. It was so unique that police could only find three cars that matched the description that were registered in north Queensland. While two were quickly ruled out, they eventually learned that the owner of one was long gone.
With this information, investigators now knew that they were looking for Rajwinder Singh, a then 34-year-old married father of three young children who were 1, 6 & 8-years-old. He had been working as a nurse at Innisfail Hospital in Queensland until he suddenly & unexpectedly left the country that he had become a citizen of three years earlier.
Investigators learned that he fled Australia to India on the morning that Troy found his daughter’s body. He left the large family home he previously shared with his wife, three children & his parents, leaving them with no access to money, resulting in their home eventually being repossessed.
His friend, Rajkaran Singh, who took him to the airport, noticed that his friend seemed very stressed that day, but denied that anything was wrong. He left his Alfa Romeo at Rajkaran’s house & never returned for it.
He first flew to Sydney, staying with his sister for the night & then left for India the following day. His wife reported him missing on Wednesday, October 24 & the following day Singh contacted his work supervisor to say that he needed severance pay because he would not be returning.
When investigators spoke with his wife, Sukhdeep Kaur, about the Sunday morning that Toyah had been murdered, she indicated that her husband left their home that morning to drive his father to his place of worship. He then headed to Cairns Central shopping center, arriving at about 11:50 am in his distinctive blue Alfa Romeo. Based on CCTV footage, dashcam & phone records, police investigators were able to piece his whereabouts together.
As he walked through the Cairns shopping center, Singh wore a striped polo shirt, gray shorts & sandals, clothing that was later seized by police from the family home. The car left the shopping center at 12:40 pm, traveling north along the Captain Cook Highway, right around the time Toyah was leaving Rusty’s to go to Wangetti Beach with Indie.
According to Sukdeep Kaur, she met & married her husband in India in 2009. He was from the Punjab village of Buttar Kalan, but they moved to Australia the year they were married. By early 2018, their relationship was strained to the point that Singh moved out of the home, but returned after she got upset & asked him to come back.
Data records indicate there was a gap in Singh’s phone between 1:16 pm & 8:15 pm, meaning his phone was either turned off or the battery died. His phone was next used that evening to call Innisfail Hospital where he worked. When he saw his wife, he told her that he was leaving for a couple of days & he left the family home in Innisfail, about an hour south of Cairns.
Since it was a school holiday, Sukdeep asked if they could all go with him, but he said no & went on to tell her that they would never hear from him again. She didn’t see him again until she gave evidence in his trial for Toyah’s murder.
One month after Toyah’s murder, detectives arrived at Singh’s family home at 10 Seymour Street in Innisfail Estate in search of any forensic evidence that could tie him to the murder. Samples of DNA were able to be compared against those found at the crime scene, including the stick found within the Toyah’s shallow grave.
This result was conclusive enough to build a strong case, being 3.7 billion times more likely than not to have come from Singh.
Through a Punjabi interpreter, Sukdeep revealed that she & Singh met & married in an arranged marriage. She initially spoke no English & worked picking bananas while Singh studied horticulture before becoming a nurse. When their eldest daughter was born in 2010, she went to India to be cared for by Singh’s mother in the first 2 ½ years of her life.
The couple went on to have two more children, a daughter & a son & they were joined by his parents in Innisfail. By 2018, the marriage was deteriorating & according to Sukdeep, Singh wanted a divorce, something she was very much against. She had no idea what had become of him during the four years he disappeared to India.
Singh’s father, Amar, & his sister, Palwinder Kaur, testified that they visited their home village of Buttar Kalan in hopes of finding him, but they hadn’t been successful. It’s unclear how or where Singh spent the four years & one month in hiding.
Before the Queensland government posted a $1 million reward on information leading to his whereabouts in November 2022, there seemed to be little motivation from the Indian authorities to locate him. There was also little to no media attention in the country where he had fled while prosecutors likened finding him to a needle in a haystack.
Because India requires an extraordinary amount of evidence to consider an extradition agreement, the Queensland police worked diligently to compile all of the necessary evidence to be sure everything was correct.
Posting the reward money generated a large amount of publicity & exactly three weeks later, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi received a tip-off. The very next morning, AFP Superintendent Murray Taylor watched as Indian police arrested Singh at a place of worship in the city’s northern district of Rana Pratap Bagh.
After his November 2022 arrest in India, Singh agreed to be extradited back to Australia while claiming he did not kill the woman. He went on to say that he wanted to reveal all the details in an Australian court. He arrived in Melbourne on March 1, 2023 where he was handed over to the Queensland police.
While in a Cairns prison, Singh spoke with an undercover police officer & in a recorded conversation he claimed to have run for his life after witnessing killers with covered faces murder Toyah. He said that he was so shocked, he went home & booked his flight to India because he feared for his life. He admitted that he knew he was wanted for murder because his car had driven to the beach.
The trial for Rajwinder Singh began in February 2025 in the Cairns Supreme Court & Toyah’s loved ones filed into the courtroom, listening to the horrific details of her murder. Eight men & four women were chosen as jury members, who were taken to Wangetti Beach to help them become familiar with key locations in the case. They were also shown drone footage of the quiet stretch of beach.
They were guided through Toyah’s movements from the day she was murdered, including her phone’s movements. Her phone, which has never been recovered, left the beach at 5 pm which was likely after she was already dead. From the beach, her phone’s movements matched those of the distinctive blue Alfa Romeo that Singh drove that was seen on multiple CCTV cameras.
Jurors also heard about DNA found on the stick that was found partially buried with Toyah’s body that proved he was 3.7 billion times more likely to contribute to the DNA found on it. DNA found on Toyah’s fingernail clippings belonged to her as well as an unknown person as Singh was excluded as a contributor.
Jurors also heard about how he left Australia for New Delhi only one day after she was murdered & was not seen again until he was tracked down in November 2022. He left his wife & three children who eventually lost their home since the mortgage wasn’t paid & he didn’t return to the hospital where he worked as a nurse.
When Singh booked the flight to India, which left after 11 am one day after Toyah was murdered, he told a phone operator that he needed to travel urgently as his grandfather was very sick.
Meanwhile Singh’s defense attorney, Angus Edwards, argued that anyone at the beach that day could have murdered Toyah. No murder weapon was found nor were there any eyewitnesses. When Edwards interviewed Toyah’s boyfriend, Marco Heidenreich, who worked as a whitewater rafting guide, he denied having anything to do with her murder. He agreed that his step-father was a former Cairns police officer who was friendly with the detective investigating Toyah’s death.
Edwards also broached the subject of the status of Toyah’s relationship with Marco at the time of her murder, something he described as having problems. He referenced her new interaction with Tyson Franklin despite the fact that she was living with Marco at the time. According to Marco, he had been completely unaware of any issues in their relationship & indicated that he & Toyah had never discussed breaking up or seeing other people.
When Tyson took the stand, he admitted that he & Toyah spent time together while Marco had been out of town. They’d gone hiking & swimming at Crystal Cascades near Cairns & then shared dinner & a night together. Although their texts were sometimes sexual & intimate, he indicated that other than laying together & cuddling, their relationship had not been sexual. She had confided in him about issues in her relationship with Marco & the defense read text messages she sent to Tyson, accusing Marco of being an angry person. She went on to write that he would come home & project his negativity onto her. Texts also proved that she was considering moving into her own place & continuing to see him.
Tyson admitted that he initially tried to conceal his new relationship with Toyah when he was questioned as part of the investigation.
Toyah’s family were distraught by the fact that they had to sit through torturous testimony & questioning even though they had all been ruled out as suspects by investigators. Her private life became public as the personal details of her life were revealed. Meanwhile, throughout the trial, Singh was described as a competent nurse who was well-respected by coworkers & did not exhibit antisocial behaviors.
On March 18, 2025, the trial ended in a hung jury after they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict following several days of deliberation. Singh’s retrial began eight months later on November 10, 2025 & lasted almost four weeks. On December 8, 2025, after about seven hours of deliberations, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. The following day, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years. He will be 63-years-old when he is first eligible for parole in 2048.
After seven long years, Toyah’s family were finally able to see their daughter’s killer face justice. Troy Cordingley, who wore purple in honor of his daughter’s favorite color, could be heard saying, Rot in hell, you b**tard. He went on to say, For us, there can never be true justice because we live in a world without Toyah. And the world will always be poorer for it.
Toyah’s family are left to only imagine what her life could have become. She was an innocent young woman who was passionate about life, she had a peaceful character & a tremendously positive outlook on life.
As their victim impact statements were read, Singh sat with his head down as they told him that the family would never forgive him for stealing the precious life of their daughter.
Justice Crowley also addressed Singh during sentencing & speculated the motive of murder, something he characterized as an opportunistic killing. Crowley made the assumption that Toyah had stumbled upon him at the beach while he was engaged in some type of sexual or embarrassing activity, prompting a confrontation. The fact that he took her phone raised the possibility that she may have recorded him or planned to report what she saw.
Officials indicate that Singh had gone to the beach after a fight with his wife & arrived allegedly carrying some fruits & a kitchen knife. When Indie began barking at him, Singh & Toyah began to argue. Angered by this, he stabbed her to death in a fit of rage, buried her body in the sand & tied Indie to a nearby tree.
The fact that Toyah had been doing something so innocent & simple on a Sunday afternoon in broad daylight when her life was so quickly & brutally taken by an absolute stranger, made this case so unsettling. She was out living her life & enjoying a beautiful day with her beloved dog when she came upon the wrong person in the wrong place at the worst possible time.
For her family, when Toyah was found, life split into a before & after. A permanent line was drawn in their lives that no amount of time will ever erase. She deserved many more decades of life that included more walks with Indie, more plans & more ordinary days. Her life mattered & she should still be here.
References:
- Realestate.com.au: Wangetti one of Cairns’ most remote, yet accessible areas
- News.com.au: Extradition order issued for man who fled to India after Toyah Cordingley’s body found on Wangetti beach
- 9 News: Autopsy images shown to jury in beach murder trial
- ABC News: Rajwinder Singh, on trial for murder of Toyah Cordingley, told undercover officer he saw ‘killers’ & ‘ran’
- ABC News: Jury hears Cairns woman Toyah Cordingley may have been alive when buried on Wangetti Beach
- AAP: Dad tells of horror at finding daughter’s body on beach
- ABC News: Toyah Cordingley was in secret relationship before her alleged murder, Supreme Court hears in Cairns
- ABC News: Toyah Cordingley’s father recalls discovering his daughter buried in sand at Wangetti Beach
- ABC News: Guilty verdict brings end to seven-year wait for justice over Toyah Cordingley’s 2018 murder
- ABC News: Toyah Cordingley’s murderer Rajwinder Singh sentenced to life in prison for ‘violent, brutal’ attack
- BBC: Jury in high-profile Australian trial visit beach where murder victim found
- Newsport: Chronology of a murder part 1: From Cairns to Wangetti
- Newsport: Chronology of a murder part 2: The Port Douglas connection
- Newsport: Chronology of a murder part 3: The killing of Toyah Cordingley
- The Times of India: ‘Rot in hell’: Indian man Rajwinder Singh found guilty of 2018 murder in Australia; stabbed 26 times & cut victim’s throat as her dog barked
- Oxygen True Crime: Indian nurse found guilty in Australian dog walker’s brutal beach murder in 2018
- People: She was walking her dog on the beach when nurse emerged & stabbed her 26 times – & heartbroken father found the body
- NDTV World: “Rot in hell, you bas****”: Indian-origin nurse convicted for 2018 murder
