A neighbour has recalled how a toddler clung to her "like a little koala bear" before his mother and her housemate were found dead nearby.

Janet Powell described finding her neighbours' lifeless bodies nearly 50 years ago as the man accused of killing Suzanne Armstrong, 28, and Susan Bartlett, 27, faced Melbourne Magistrates Court.

She first noticed something was awry two days earlier, on January 11, 1977, when a dog stumbled into her yard on Easey Street in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Collingwood.

"I went out the front to sweep the footpath on our little porch and the dog came running," she told the court. "I knew the puppy."

Ms Powell said it was Benji, her neighbours' Beagle X, and she went over to Ms Armstrong and Ms Bartlett's place next door where she knocked several times but

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