Toyah Cordingley’s killer handed a 25-year non-parole term in prison
Toyah Cordingley’s killer handed a 25-year non-parole term in prison
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By Laine Clark
Updated December 9, 2025 — 2.00pm
A former nurse has been sentenced to a 25-year term with no possibility of parole for fatally stabbing Toyah Cordingley, seven years after her body was found on a secluded beach.
Rajwinder Singh, 41, received a life sentence a day after a Cairns Supreme Court jury found him guilty of murder following a four-week retrial.
Singh repeatedly stabbed Ms Cordingley and slashed her throat at a Far North Queensland beach in October 2018 before fleeing to India and spending years in hiding.
Cordingley, 24, was discovered by her father partially buried in sand dunes at Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, the day after she failed to return from walking her dog.
A jury returned a guilty verdict on Monday after roughly seven hours of deliberation.
Singh’s first trial ended in a hung jury eight months earlier.
Cordingley had taken her dog to Wangetti Beach on October 21, 2018.
Her family raised the alarm when she did not return, and her father made the grim discovery the following morning about 80 metres from her car.
Police described Cordingley’s death as the result of “a personal and intimate attack.”
Shortly after the body was found, Singh, a nurse from Innisfail—located about an hour’s drive south of Cairns—left Australia for India, the country of his birth.
He boarded a flight to India, leaving behind his wife and three children.
Queensland Police offered a record $1 million reward in late 2022 for information leading to Singh’s location and arrest.
Weeks later, Singh was arrested in New Delhi, extradited to Australia, and charged with murder in March 2023.
Queensland Police later confirmed that the $1 million reward had been paid to several informants.
AAP
