By Erin Pearson and Marta Pascual Juanola
In the early hours of the morning on October 1, 1999, as neighbours along Rembrandt Drive were sound asleep, the sounds of muffled screams and a car speeding off echoed through the quiet Melbourne street.
Police equipped with spotlights patrolled the suburban street at the crack of dawn, looking for signs of foul play. But without a specific address to doorknock or obvious signs of a disturbance, they drove off before daylight.
Slumped on the front porch of one of the Wheelers Hill homes, undetected by the bright lights, was the body of Hilary-Anne Stevens. She had been stabbed four times in the back.
Hilary-Anne Stevens.
She had attempted to ward off the vicious attack with her arms to no avail and succumbed to her injuries by the time her flatmate found her hours later.
On the night of her murder, Stevens – an outgoing 21-year-old who worked as a security guard – had gone out for dinner at a Malaysian restaurant near Mount Waverley’s Pinewood Shopping Centre with a man 20 years her senior, a married hospital orderly she had been seeing on and off for several months named Colin Earl Graham. He would later be found guilty of her murder and sentenced to 18 years in jail.
The murder made brief headlines at the time, but almost two decades later the man responsible became the suspect in a different case: the fatal stabbing of a recently widowed nurse at her Ringwood home in 1986.
Like Stevens, 25-year-old Ina-Doris Warrick had gone out for dinner with Graham on the night of her death. She, too, had been brutally stabbed in the back with a knife and left for dead at her home, some 13 years earlier.
Ina-Doris Warrick, Colin Earl Graham and Hilary-Anne Stevens.
Both women had met Graham through their work, Warrick at the hospital where she nursed and Stevens during her time as a security guard.
More than 30 years later, in September this year, a Supreme Court jury found Graham not guilty of Warrick’s cold case death after less than a day of deliberation.
Under the rules of evidence, the jurors were not allowed to be told of the killer’s past, with the details excluded to ensure Graham – now 67 years old – was given a fair trial.
They were also unaware that a jury had been unable to reach a verdict in the same case earlier this year, necessitating this second trial.
The second jury was unaware of Graham’s imprisonment for murdering Stevens in 1999. Or that he’d dropped her home in his VT Holden Commodore before repeatedly stabbing her in the back with a large knife he hid in the driver’s side pocket of his car.
Comments from Justice Bernard Teague during Graham’s sentencing for Stevens’ murder about her killer’s tendency to lie in that trial were also withheld.
“At times, you merely twist the truth; at other times you are a brazen liar,” Teague said.
During a week-long trial in September, the jury in Warrick’s case was privy to evidence from 19 witnesses, including Gregory Stewart, an anaesthetist the 25-year-old nurse was having an affair with.
They heard that in March 1986 Graham was aged 30 and living in a modest four-bedroom Ringwood home on Herbert Street he and his wife Robyn had purchased for $35,000 years earlier.
Four kilometres away on Oban Road, Warrick was living alone and mourning the loss of her late husband Allan, confiding in friends she was struggling with her new life as a single woman.
Graham and Warrick both worked shifts at Box Hill Hospital and when he dropped by her home on the afternoon of Friday, March 21, 1986, he invited the widow out for a pizza dinner.
Warrick was due to work the late shift, so Graham told police he dropped her home about 8.45pm, walking her to the front door but never entering.
But the young nurse never arrived at work that night and was reported dead to police days later, after neighbours grew concerned about her overflowing mailbox and dared to peek inside.
There, they found Warrick’s bloodied body unmoving on her back on the bed, her feet resting on the floor. She’d been stabbed twice in the back, one blow puncturing her lung.
She was still dressed in the faun-coloured slacks and blouse she was wearing on the night of the pizza dinner. No defensive wounds were found.
Ina-Doris Warrick worked as a nurse at Box Hill Hospital.Credit:Victoria Police
In the weeks and months following her brutal death, police narrowed in on two key suspects – Graham and Stewart, the anaesthetist who was in the throes of an affair with Warrick.
When police first interviewed Stewart on April 2, 1986, he told homicide investigators he’d spent the Friday afternoon with Warrick but returned home to his wife to later learn of his lover’s death on the television news.
In the days that followed his story began to crumble, and investigators soon learned he had stopped by her house on the Saturday to leave a note wishing her luck for work that evening, before returning on the Sunday.
“Knock ’em dead at Box Hill,” he wrote on a Post-it Note.
Ina-Doris Warrick.Credit:Victoria Police
On the Sunday, he later admitted, he ventured in and found Warrick dead on her bed before fleeing the scene in his white BMW, later returning to remove the handwritten note but failing to tell anyone what he’d found. Insufficient evidence existed to bring any charge against Stewart.
Warrick’s death went largely uninvestigated for a decade before it was re-examined in 2000 and again eight years later. Graham was eventually arrested and charged with a single count of murder on November 30, 2018.
During the recent trial, three witnesses testified that Graham had confessed he was responsible for killing Warrick, with one recalling being told: “When he killed her, he never felt so alive in his life, and that no woman would ever say no to him.”
Colin Graham arrives at the Supreme Court of Victoria in March.Credit:AAP
Graham’s defence team disputed all three witness admissions, revealing all had surfaced after a million-dollar reward was offered on a television show featuring the cold case in March 2017. They asked the jury to consider whether each witness was motivated by greed to lie.
Graham maintains his innocence.
“We’ve all got duties in this courtroom, and they can be a wonderful privilege and also a terrible burden,” Graham’s defence barrister Malcolm Thomas told the jury. “There is no evidence of motive.”
Stevens’ Parents Colleen and Tony Stevens comfort Hilary’s sister, Adelle Magus (left), at a police media conference.Credit:Joe Armao
Stevens’ mother Colleen followed the trial closely from Sydney as her daughter’s killer faced court for a second time more than two decades on.
She told The Age she’s accepted the jury’s recent decision but losing a child, she says, changes a person forever.
The Stevens family is now left to savour moments including when pink and cream lilies briefly bloom in their NSW backyard on the anniversary of the 21-year-old’s death.
Red lilies the family has planted come out yearly to mark her birthday.
Those who knew the young security guard hope she’ll also be remembered for the life she lived and not the brutal way she died, recalling memories of when she patrolled the Deakin University car park where she worked, topping up tickets for students as they were about to expire.
As for Graham, “God will deal with him”, Colleen Stevens says.
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