Killers heard confessing in secret Anita Cobby tapes

Police have made public the secret tapes of Anita Cobby’s killers confessing to what was one of the most brutal murders in Australian history.

The recordings of John Travers and Michael Murdoch, two of five men convicted over the gang rape and murder of the Sydney nurse, make for chilling listening 30 years on.

To secure the confessions, detectives strapped a listening device to Travers’ aunt, known as “Miss X”.

Miss X was married to Travers’ brother and went to police after she began to suspect the then 18-year-old had been involved in Ms Cobby’s murder.

Hiding a microphone in her bra, Miss X visited Travers in his prison cell.

“I don’t know how to put it, did you have sex with her?” she whispers to Travers in the tape, which was played at the murder trial and aired last night on the Seven Network.

“Yeah,” he replies.

“Did anybody else?” she asks.

“All of them,” he says.

“We were all drunk and she’d f---ing seen all of us. I said, ‘she’s got to be done’, and they said ‘do your thing’. So I just cut her.”

A second never heard before recording of Miss X visiting Murdoch, was also aired.

The aunt, who was a heroin user and is still in witness protection to this day, tracked Murdoch down despite being terrified of the consequences, former Homicide Squad Detective Sergeant Ian Kennedy said.

In the recording, Miss X can be heard apologising to Murdoch’s wife for waking her in the night and asking to speak to her husband.

“Mick I’m sorry, I saw John today,” Miss X says when Murdoch appears.

“He told me everything. I know everything all right, about what happened. I know it all,” she says.

The 26-year-old nurse had been set upon by the men while walking home from work in Blacktown.

She was savagely raped and beaten for hours. One of her attackers slit her throat so badly she was almost decapitated.

Twenty-six days after Ms Cobby died, Travers, Murdoch and three brothers - Michael, Gary and Les Murphy - were in custody.

The secret tapes led to all five being sentenced to life behind bars, where they remain today.