Australia Australia - Margaret Penny, 58, & Claire Acocks, 49, Portland, Vic, 3 May 1991

THE brother-in-law of a Geelong woman has emerged as the prime suspect of a high-profile double homicide which left two women, including his wife, dead in a Portland hair salon 23 years ago.

Claire Acocks and Margaret Penny were killed at a Portland hairdresser in 1991, about 288km west of Geelong, in a crime that rocked the rural town of 9000 people.

Ms Penny’s sister, Ann Bryden, lives in Geelong and said she would never forget the phone call telling her of the incident.

Click to expand...

ANN Bryden was busy ferrying one of her teenage kids into town in 1991 when she got a phone call that still sticks in her mind.

“You better come back here quickly,’’ her sister, Linda, said, but wouldn’t elaborate.

“I went around to Mum’s place. She was living in Clonard St, and Linda and Mum and Mum’s friends were all crying,’’ Ann says.

“They said to me, ‘Margaret got killed’.’’

Click to expand...

A GEELONG woman is convinced her brother-in-law was not her sister’s murderer in a gruesome double-murder in a Portland hair salon 23 years ago.

Click to expand...

Police revealed in court that the case against Mr Penny largely rested on three phone calls to family and a conversation with Mrs Acock’s husband the day after she was killed.

And in a covertly recorded chat in February last year, Mr Penny told his granddaughter a comb was used as the murder weapon, the court heard.

Detective Leading Senior Constable Tom Hogan told the Supreme Court that in the hours after the women were murdered, Mr Penny had disclosed unreleased details about the killings.

en-Constable Hogan said telephone calls by Mr Penny to his son in the UK and to his daughter in Melbourne in the hours after the women were killed were crucial.

He said Mr Penny had disclosed chilling detail to Mrs Acock’s husband the morning after they were killed.

Click to expand...