THE evidence of a former soldier who testified he saw two little girls being driven across Townsville by an erratic driver 29 years ago, emerged yesterday as a key plank in the Crown case against an 87-year-old man charged with the murder of the Mackay sisters.
Summing up the Crown case, prosecutor Jim Henry told a jury in the Townsville Supreme Court that if it accepted the evidence of Neil Lunney it would have to find Arthur Stanley Brown guilty of murdering the Mackay sisters on August 26, 1970.
Mr Lunney, who was 29 in August 1970 and had only recently returned from active service in Vietnam, testified last week that he saw two little girls in school uniforms in a car in front of him as he drove to work on the day the Mackay sisters went missing.
He said the driver had angered him because he would not let him pass and had tried to run him off the road.
Mr Lunney has identified Mr Brown as the man he saw that day.
Mr Henry said Mr Lunney had good reasons to remember the driver's face. He had been enraged by the man's driving and had a good look at him when he drew level with his car in order to berate him.
"He is the man who had a good look at the man who drove the Mackay girls to their death," Mr Henry said.
Susan Mackay, 5, and her sister Judith, 7, disappeared while waiting for a bus to school. Their bodies were found two days later in a dry creek bed 25km south-west of Townsville.
Evidence has been given that Mr Brown was a maintenance carpenter at Townsville schools, including the one the Mackay girls attended.
Mr Brown has pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering the girls, sexually assaulting them and depriving them of their liberty.
Yesterday, he elected not to give evidence on his own behalf.
Mr Henry said the defence, in its cross-examination of witnesses, had made much of the evidence that Mr Brown was a neat and fastidious man who wore "creases like knife blades" in the sleeves of his work shirts.
But Mr Brown's neatness was a "two-edged sword" for the defence, Mr Henry said, pointing out that when the girls' bodies were found, their school uniforms were folded neatly beside them.
The trial continues.
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