She Was Walking Her Dog on the Beach When Nurse Emerged and Stabbed Her 26 Times — and Heartbroken Father Found the Body

A former nurse who fled to India after 24-year-old Toyah Cordingley was found fatally stabbed and half-buried on a Queensland beach has been sentenced to life in prison, nearly seven years after her killing.

Rajwinder Singh, 41, was convicted on Monday, Dec. 8, in the Supreme Court in Cairns at the end of a four-week retrial — about eight months after a previous jury was unable to reach a verdict, according to multiple outlets. Jurors deliberated for roughly seven hours before returning a unanimous decision.

On Tuesday, Dec. 9, Justice Lincoln Crowley sentenced Singh to life in prison and set a 25-year non-parole period.

Cordingley vanished on Oct. 21, 2018, after driving to Wangetti Beach to walk her dog. When she did not return home that night, her family went searching. Her father discovered her body the next morning, half-buried in sand dunes. The dog was later found alive, tied tightly to a nearby tree.

In court, jurors heard that Cordingley’s throat had been slashed and that she had suffered at least 26 stab wounds. Her body had been left in a shallow, sandy grave.

The killing shocked Far North Queensland. Hundreds of people marched against violence toward women, bumper stickers with Toyah’s name appeared on cars, and local residents demanded justice.

Outside court on Monday, Cordingley’s mother, Vanessa Gardiner, described the guilty verdict as “a long awaited day for us as a family,” but “not one to celebrate.” She said, “Today is a big piece of this journey that needed an ending and most of all, justice for our Toyah,” calling her daughter a “lovable, innocent, full of life young woman.”

“We are different people now because of this tragedy,” Gardiner added. “We will always wonder what could’ve been if her life was not cut so short.”

She said the family would never forgive Singh and emphasized that there were “multiple victims,” including Toyah’s partner and Singh’s own wife and children, whom she described as “collateral damage from this man’s actions.”

Inside the courtroom, Cordingley’s father could be heard saying, “Rot in hell, you bastard,” after the verdict was read, before later thanking the jurors, prosecutors and investigators for their work.

“Today’s verdict has delivered a form of justice but for us there can never be true justice because we live in a world without Toyah,” he said. “And the world will always be poorer for it.”

Queensland Police Inspector Sonia Smith said Cordingley’s murder left a “deep scar” on the community and called the investigation “one of the largest and most complex in Far North history.” She noted that detectives made “significant sacrifices” to ensure no stone was left unturned.

Singh, originally from India’s Punjab state, had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing. Investigators identified him as a person of interest after realizing that the movements of his blue Alfa Romeo matched those of Cordingley’s phone as it travelled away from the beach.

During sentencing, Justice Crowley addressed the question of motive, saying it remained “unknown,” but he characterized the murder as an “opportunistic killing.” He suggested an “obvious explanation” for Singh’s “shocking and sickening act of violence” was that Cordingley had stumbled upon him engaged in “some type of disgraceful, embarrassing activity” of a “sexual and perverted” nature at the secluded beach, prompting a confrontation.

Singh’s decision to take Cordingley’s phone, Crowley said, raised the possibility that she might have recorded him or intended to report what she saw.

The judge called Singh a “selfish and heartless individual” who “took flight like a gutless coward,” noting that he left Australia without even saying goodbye to his wife or children.

On the morning after Cordingley was killed, Singh booked a one-way flight to New Delhi and told a travel agent his grandfather was very sick before leaving his family behind. His wife and three young children — who depended on him financially — did not hear from him for more than four years and ultimately lost their home.

Crowley said Singh’s years in India “prolonged the anguish” of Cordingley’s family and showed he had taken no responsibility for what he had done.

Prosecutors told the court that DNA recovered from a stick at the scene was 3.8 billion times more likely to have come from Singh than from a random member of the public, arguing that the evidence pointed firmly to him and “eliminated others.”

In late 2022, Queensland police offered a record $1 million reward for information leading to Singh’s arrest. Weeks later, he was located at a Sikh Gurdwara in New Delhi. Singh did not contest extradition and was returned to Australia in early 2023.

He was charged that March, and his first trial earlier this year ended in a hung jury. Before his extradition, Singh told the Australian Associated Press, “I did not kill the woman,” and said he wanted to “reveal all the details” in an Australian court.

A jury ultimately rejected that claim in his retrial.