False information burdens investigations into racing driver Peter Brock

Police also spoke to Russ Hamilton, a married cigarette salesman who had a brief relationship with Bartlett and had been at the property just days before her murder. He was immediately cleared of any involvement.

Shearer Barry Woodard, who was introduced to Armstrong on a blind date on Christmas Day 1976, was also questioned by police at the force’s former headquarters in Russell Street.

“They even took my fingerprints, but I didn’t mind. I have nothing to hide,” Woodard told the media just four days after Armstrong’s death. He was also cleared of any involvement.

Victoria Police, with the assistance of Interpol, were also able to track down the Greek father of Armstrong’s son Gregory, who was just 16 months old at the time of his mother’s murder. Armstrong had a fleeting relationship with the man on the Greek island of Naxos in 1975.

A major breakthrough came in February 1977 when detectives flew to Hobart to question a then 31-year-old man who was being held in Risdon Prison after a blood-stained knife was found in a car with Victorian registration plates.

The vehicle was shipped to Tasmania just four days after the Easey Street murders.

It turned out to be one of many diversionary tactics in an investigation that has puzzled police for decades.

In many media reports at the time, Armstrong was repeatedly referred to as an “unmarried mother,” while the two were also described as “party girls.”

Journalist Helen Thomas, who released a six-part podcast earlier this year, criticised police leadership for suggesting in public statements that women who left their curtains open and the lights on were making it clear that they lived alone and had not taken adequate measures to protect themselves.

Thomas wonders whether the police investigation would have turned out differently if the women had not been single, as revealed in an interview with this publication in March.

Former homicide detective Peter Hiscock agrees, saying that few people locked their doors back then.

“It was a different time and most people were very relaxed about security around the house. It was a time when you knew your neighbors and this type of crime was rare,” he said.

Hiscock, one of the first detectives to discover the bodies, defended the police investigation.

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“All kinds of information came in, and a lot of it was unfounded or just rumors. But you have to remember that back then there were no surveillance cameras, no DNA evidence and no fingerprint database,” he said.

Hiscock, now 77, said he was stunned when he learned of Perry Kouroumblis’ arrest in Rome on Friday.

“I never thought it would happen. I honestly thought too much time had passed.”