The final two witnesses will give evidence at an inquest into the 1974 murders of two Sydney nurses. Source: AAP
NEARLY 40 years after Sydney nurses Wendy Evans and Lorraine Wilson were murdered and dumped in bushland near Toowoomba, a new inquest has led to fresh evidence about the killings.
Relatives of the two women were clearly relieved after the second coronial inquest into the murders was adjourned on Thursday following three and half days of harrowing evidence.
For the victims' families, it was a long battle to give their loved ones a courtroom hearing and now there's hope their killers may be brought to justice.
"It's a great relief," Ms Wilson's brother Eric Wilson told reporters outside the court.
"We've waited nearly 40 years for this and now it's come to an end."
Michelle Tuitufu, the sister of Wendy Evans, raised her arms in a gesture of victory as she walked through the front doors of Toowoomba Magistrates Court.
Coroner Michael Barnes will decide whether there's enough evidence to lay charges after hearing from a final witness, who has been unable to testify because of illness, at a date to be set in Brisbane.
Witnesses are still coming forward with fresh evidence 37 years after the two nurses' skeletal remains were found in 1976, two years after they went missing.
A Toowoomba man appeared on Thursday as a last-minute witness after contacting police this week.
Gary John Cullinan, 57, believes he saw the nurses drinking at a nightclub with a man he knew as "Shorty Hilton" one Saturday night in 1974.
It's unclear whether he was referring to dead suspects Allan John "Shorty" Laurie or Wayne "Boogie" Hilton, or another man.
He said he ascertained the women were nurses from Goondiwindi and seemed to be having a good time, but they had seemed reluctant as they got into a car with "Shorty" and Allan Neil "Ungie" Laurie, another suspect.
Ms Evans and Ms Wilson had hitchhiked from Goondiwindi to Brisbane before they vanished.
Outside court, Toowoomba police Inspector Kerry Thompson said a number of fresh leads had emerged as a result of publicity from the inquest and they would be followed up.
Earlier, a key witness retracted what he told police in a 2008 interview.
Desmond Hilton went on record saying his cousins "Ungie" Laurie and "Shorty" Laurie had talked about having "given two girls a good hiding down the bottom of the range".
He also told police he'd seen blood in the back of their car.
On Thursday, he told the inquest his cousins had said they'd given "two people" a good hiding and couldn't recall any blood being in the car.
He blamed his memory loss on alcoholism.
During the inquest, a number of witnesses have told the inquest they believed they'd seen Ms Evans and Ms Wilson being forced into a green Holden around the time of their disappearance.
Key surviving suspects Allan "Ungie" Laurie and Terrence "Jimmy" Neil denied any involvement in the murders.
The inquest also heard that a gang of local men had regularly abducted women from the Toowoomba's main street in the 1970s, and that dead suspect Wayne "Boogie" Hilton had once confessed to his boss that he and his brother killed two nurses.
Ms Wilson, 20, and Ms Evans, 18, disappeared while hitchhiking in Queensland in October 1974.
Their remains were found two years later in bushland, at Murphys Creek, near the southern Queensland city of Toowoomba.
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