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A killer who stripped his female victim, stabbed her, fractured her face and forced stones down her throat to keep her from screaming could still have a reputation worth protecting.
Legal experts agree that murderer Andrew Ronald MacMillan could have won a claim for defamation if his case against Fairfax Media had gone to court.
In 2004 Fairfax, owners of the Press and Dominion Post, published articles describing MacMillan as a rapist, but he was never charged with rape.
MacMillan sought punitive damages when the company refused to print a correction and apology, and Fairfax settled out of court after legal advice that it would probably lose an expensive court battle.
Despite the savagery of the attack, media law experts said the killer still had a reputation that could be damaged by being called a rapist.
"It's like your reputation is divided into sectors. Just because you've been found guilty of, for example, a violent offence, doesn't mean that your reputation for honesty is besmirched," said Victoria University media law lecturer Steven Price.
"The basic principle is: if you're accusing somebody of doing something they haven't done, and it will make people think less of them, it doesn't matter if they've done other bad things. Generally speaking, the courts will say that's extra defamation."
Chapman Tripp partner Jack Hodder believed that MacMillan's case was the first of its kind here, but similar cases had been brought in the US.
"And then you get the idea of what is the lowest of the low. Is a murderer and rapist a lower form of life than a mere murderer? Murder has a whole range of shades from manslaughter to the worst, most revolting pre-meditated murders.
"So within the murder community, if you like, there are different reputations. And you could say at the bottom of the heap there are murderers who are also rapists."
He said MacMillan could have had a case, but a victory may not have brought him riches. "You could argue his reputation was such that there's nothing to be lost, and therefore the only entitlement would be at best nominal damages, which traditionally is $1 or $10."
