Man confessed to killing nurses, witness tells inquest

He remembers clambering over a barbed-wire fence, walking through the scrub and coming to a clearing in the bush at the foot of the Great Dividing Range.

There he saw his older brother, Allan "Shorty" Laurie, "making love" to a woman, while another woman lay on the ground beside them.

One woman was naked, the other had her black skirt above her head.

He heard one woman say, 'that's enough'.

Shorty was there with his step-uncles Allan Neil Laurie and Donald "Donny" Laurie and their mates Terrance James "Jimmy" O'Neill and Larry Charles.

"It was like a gang bang," Mr Laurie said.

On Tuesday, at a coronial inquest into the 1974 killings of young Sydney nurses Lorraine Wilson and Wendy Evans, Mr Laurie recounted what he saw that evening.

The skeletal remains of the young nurses were found in a Murphys Creek paddock in 1976, with their skulls bashed in and their bones tangled with cord from venetian blinds.

No one has ever been charged with their murder.

The Laurie and Hilton families kept close company, the Toowoomba court heard.

Mr Laurie's mother Joyce Hilton married Cecil John Laurie.

The two clans partied together, traded cars and lived in close proximity.

In fact, the Laurie and Hilton boys often referred to their uncles as their brothers.

Mr Laurie told the court a family friend, who he referred to as "Kingsley", had brought the two women to a party at his parent's Toowoomba house from Goondiwindi.

He said the group of men and the two women left his parents' house in Donny's green-coloured HR Holden and Shorty's EJ Holden to go to another "party" at a paddock in Murphys Creek.

His brother and his mates often took girls out to "bonfire parties", Mr Laurie said.

He said the men never spoke about what happened later that night.

However, according to former sawmill worker Neil Shum, one of the men did.

Mr Shum told the inquest Wayne Hilton once confessed to murdering two nurses at the bottom of the Toowoomba range.

"Wayne told me he couldn't work for me any longer," Mr Shum said.

"I asked him why and he told me what they had done ...

"Firstly he said, 'Have you seen the pictures of our car in the paper?'

"He said, 'They're right onto us'. He said 'You would have heard of the nurses being murdered down the range' ...

"He said, 'It was me and the brother done that' ...

"I just said to him, 'Why did you do it?'

"He said, 'Full of piss and bad manners'."

Allan John "Shorty" Laurie and Wayne "Boogie" Hilton have since died.

Ms Wilson, 20, and Ms Evans, 18, were holidaying in Queensland in 1974. The two friends were planning to hitch-hike from Brisbane to Dubbo, but never reached their destination.

The inquest continues.