The man arrested in Italy over the Easey Street murders – one of Victoria’s most brutal unsolved killings – was a student at a school where one of the victims taught.
Perry Kouroumblis, now 65, was a student at Collingwood High School – now called Collingwood College – where Susan Bartlett was an arts and crafts teacher.
Perry Kouroumblis, a 65-year-old dual citizen of Australia and Greece, was arrested in Italy.
In January 1977, Bartlett’s body was found near the front door of her home on Easey Street, Collingwood. She had been stabbed 55 times.
In a bedroom was her housemate Suzanne Armstrong, who had been raped and stabbed more than 20 times, with three wounds to the heart.
A colleague’s tribute to Susan Bartlett in The Age.Credit: The Age
After a breakthrough arrest of Kouroumblis in Rome 47 years later, a former Collingwood High student posted on Facebook: “Sue Bartlett was a teacher of ours at Collingwood High School. I remember that time, it hit us bad, also we went to her funeral. I am so glad finally they can rest in peace and a big relief for their families after all these years.”
A fellow teacher, quoted in an Age article just after the murders, said Bartlett “was an enormously competent person, both as a teacher and as a creative person”.
More than a week after the bodies were discovered, Kouroumblis was pulled over by local constable and later homicide detective Ron Iddles, who found a knife in a scabbard in the boot of his car.
Kouroumblis, then a teenager, said he had found it on Collingwood railway tracks on January 10, between 10.20pm and 11pm. That was 90 minutes after the two women were last seen alive.
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