The final steps in the extradition of the prime suspect in the Easey Street murders are expected to play out within days after the Italian government okayed the process.
Perry Kouroumblis’ lawyer in Rome, Serena Tucci, told 9News Italian Justice Minister Carlo Nordio authorised the move on October 30 but the 65-year-old wasn’t told until Friday.
The decision takes him one step closer to formally facing charges in Victoria over the alleged double murder of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett at their home in Melbourne in 1977.
“So now the extradition is confirmed, okay. Now we are waiting for the [confirmation] of the judge of the Court of Appeal in Rome,” she said.
“And then the Australian police can take, come back with Perry in Australia.”
Tucci said she expected Rome Court of Appeal judge Aldo Morgini to give the final approval in the coming days.
Kouroumblis gave his own consent to be extradited in September, less than a week after he was arrested at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport on an Interpol red notice.
He proclaimed his innocence, his lawyer said, at the time.
Tucci said the 65-year-old was “good” but a “little worried” when she spoke to him on Monday.
Before his arrest, he had been living in Greece – where he couldn’t be arrested because of the statute of limitations – since he left Melbourne in 2017, when he was a person of interest in the case.
Armstrong and Bartlett, 27 and 28, were found dead in their homes on Easey Street in Collingwood on January 13, 1977.
They had both been stabbed several times and Armstrong had been raped.
In the week after their discovery, police found Kouroumblis with a knife. He was considered a person of interest but never charged.
In a reinvestigation into the crime, he agreed to provide DNA, but then fled to Greece.
Armstrong and Bartlett had last been seen alive on January 10, 1977.
Armstrong’s 16-month-old baby was found alive and unharmed in his cot when police found the women’s bodies.
Tucci said she was in regular contact with a lawyer acting for Kouroumblis in Australia but he didn’t want to be identified at this stage in the process.
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