A father has testified how he was “horrified” to find the slain body of his daughter, Toyah Cordingley, during an impromptu search for the missing young woman.

Cordingley drove to Wangetti Beach, north of Cairns, for a Sunday afternoon walk with her dog on October 21, 2018 and never returned.

Her father, Troy, told the jury today he set out to search the pre-dawn beach the next day.

He said he felt tired and went to rest under trees where he saw a mound in the sand.

The jury heard Cordingley dropped to his knees after thinking it was unnatural and looked odd.

“I scooped the sand three times. On the third scoop there was a foot,” Cordingley said as his voice broke with emotion.

“I reeled back. I was horrified. I yelled out, ‘Help me, help me’. I was shocked, stunned.”

Crown prosecutor Nathan Crane took the jury through the movements of Cordingley’s phone leaving the beach at 5pm that day, which he said was after she likely died.

The jury was told her phone was roughly located in multiple areas that corresponded to a blue Alfa Romeo sedan seen on multiple CCTV cameras driving to Lake Placid Holiday Apartments.

“The vehicle has features of its colour, its wheels and its distinctive grille … Rajwinder Singh owned a blue Alfa Romeo, a similar vehicle,” Crane said.

Jurors were shown photographs of the mound that covered Cordingley’s body after she was found on October 22, 2018.

Singh, who sat in the dock with his hands clasped in his lap, closed his eyes and looked down while the images were displayed on a large screen.

Crane said a stick was found partially buried with Cordingley, who had been stabbed in the chest and hands and her throat slashed.

“Mr Singh was 3.7 billion times more likely to contribute the DNA found on that stick,” he said.

A male DNA sample 2000 times more likely to be from Singh than a random man was found on Cordingley’s fingernails.

The jury heard Singh left Australia for New Delhi a day after Cordingley’s body was found and he was not seen again until tracked down in his native India in November 2022.

“Did not return to (his wife) or his children. The house was lost. The mortgage was not paid. He did not return to work (as a hospital nurse),” Crane said.

Defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury in his opening address anybody at the beach that day could have killed Cordingley.

“As you go through trial, ask yourself if Mr Singh being the killer is the only possibility,” Edwards said.

He asked the jury to consider whether the evidence about the phone, DNA and Alpha Romeo was as strong as the prosecution made it out to be.

Later in the day, Edwards cross-examined Cordingley’s partner, Marco Heidenreich, a whitewater rafting guide from Port Douglas.

Heidenreich denied having anything to do with Cordingley’s death.

He agreed his step-father was a former Cairns police officer and was friendly at the time with a detective investigating Cordingley’s death.

“Did you think there was anything unusual about your treatment by the police?” Edwards asked.

The trial is due to run for another four weeks in Cairns before Justice James Henry.