ON a Saturday morning last month, while some townspeople browsed stalls at the Euroa Farmers Market, Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Rowe knocked on two doors.
He was in Euroa to inform the sisters of Suzanne Armstrong – one of two women murdered in 1977 in their home at Easey Street, Collingwood – that after almost 50 years, police had made an arrest.
The detective told them the man alleged to have murdered Suzanne and her friend Sue Bartlett was Perry Kouroumblis, a 65-year-old former resident of Bendigo Street, near Easey Street.
Later that afternoon, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton fronted a press conference to share the news.
“This was an investigation that struck at the very heart of the community,” he said.
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“I want to acknowledge though also and recognise the enduring resilience of both the Armstrong and the Bartlett families.
“They've grieved for over nearly five decades, waiting for answers.”
The development in the long-running cold case has been widely covered by Australian media outlets, as Mr Kouroumblis reportedly awaits extradition to Australia from an Italian prison.
Suzanne’s youngest sister, Euroa’s Loretta McPherson, told this masthead the news came as an “amazing shock”.
“I am very happy,” she added.
Suzanne’s other sister, Euroa’s Gayle Armstrong, told The Age that Saturday: “There’s no words to describe it.”
She later told this masthead: “Thank you to the police, just amazing, how they sifted through the information after all these years.”
“Words can’t describe how I feel now,” the former Euroa Taxis owner said.
Gayle had taken in Suzanne’s son, Greg Armstrong, after the 16-month-old was discovered by police in his cot at the Easey Street home 48 hours after the alleged double murder.
The arrest of Mr Kouroumblis has further dispelled speculation regarding a list of eight previous suspects, two of whom have apparently lived in Euroa.
These suspects were ruled out, cleared of any alleged involvement, through DNA testing in the late 1990s, according to reports in The Age and Helen Thomas’ 2019 book, Murder on Easey Street – one of two books to have closely examined the abandoned suspect list.
One suspect was Barry Woodard, who had been dating Suzanne at the time of her murder and was described in Ms Thomas’ book as a “shearer from Euroa”.
Another Euroa suspect, whose identity has not been revealed publicly, had previously dated Suzanne and was in Melbourne at the time of the murders.
The case appeared to go even colder when these men and six others were cleared of suspected wrongdoing in 1998.
But in 2017, Victoria Police announced a $1 million reward for individuals with information on the case, with a detective telling ABC News police were looking again at about 130 “persons of interest” connected with the investigation.
Mr Kouroumblis, it has now been revealed, was one such person.
Suzanne Armstrong and Sue Bartlett had met as students at Benalla High School.
Suzanne was born in Euroa in 1949, and before her family moved to Benalla in the 1960s, they lived in Boho South, then briefly in Violet Town.
“The name Armstrong has been synonymous with Strathbogie from the time the selectors arrived there in the late 1870s,” wrote Cliff Halsall in his 1989 book, About Some Euroa and District Personalities and Families (Volume 1).
“The brothers Robinson, William and Robert arrived there in drays from Whittlesea in 1877, and Armstrong descendants live in Strathbogie to this day.”
Robinson Armstrong – the namesake of Strathbogie’s Armstrong Avenue and a former Shire of Euroa president – had been Suzanne’s great grandfather.
Suzanne’s grandfather, Arthur Armstrong, settled in Boho South in the 1930s, where her father Bill Armstrong lived until moving with his family to Violet Town, then Benalla.
Suzanne’s mother, Eileen Currie, had been brought up in Kithbrook.
Suzanne’s son, Greg, spent part of his schooling years in Euroa.
He grew up not knowing his mother or father, who had been a fisherman in Naxos, Greece.
But as a young adult, he established a relationship with his father, Manolis Margaritis, after crime reporter Tom Prior organised for the two to be reunited, in a story told in his 1996 book, They Trusted Men.
“The worst thing is not to know who did it,” Greg told Mr Prior in the mid 90s, after meeting his father.
“There is nothing I can do, but it would be different if I knew.
“For one thing, it would be something big I wouldn’t have to think about every day.
“The best thing about my father is that he’s a top bloke, but it would be good even if he wasn’t, if he was ordinary.
“From all accounts, the last thing my mother could be described as was ‘ordinary’.
“I miss her.
“I wish I could meet my mother again, even just once.”
The Euroa Gazette was closed over the holidays when the bodies of Suzanne and Sue were discovered on January 13, 1977.
In the Gazette’s first edition that year, published on January 20, no news of the murders made the local paper – only a death notice for Suzanne and a funeral notice for her and Sue.
Two more death notices followed the next week.
But Suzanne has never been forgotten, even as the knowledge of who took her life has escaped the family for over 47 years.
With DNA evidence allegedly linking Perry Kouroumblis to the crime, that could finally change.
