Adrian Bayley murdered Jill Meagher after raping her so as to avoid a lengthy jail term, he told police.
Sentenced yesterday to life for "a crime among the worst kinds conceivable", he will be 76 before he becomes eligible for parole.
For some, even that sentence - stipulating a non-parole period of 35 years - did not adequately reflect the brutality of a crime which shocked Australia. The judge, Geoffrey Nettle, resisted prosecution calls for the 41-year-old from Coburg, Victoria, to be jailed indefinitely, saying he considered Bayley's guilty plea to reflect "a small degree of genuine remorse".
Meagher's father George McKeon, who was in court, with her mother Edith, brother Michael and husband Tom Meagher, said afterwards that the family believed "justice has now been done". He added: "Jill lived a life full of family, friends and her beloved Tom. Jill was brutally raped and murdered, and is never coming back."
The Victorian Supreme Court had heard that Bayley had a history of violent sexual attacks on women dating back 20 years, and was on parole when he snatched 29-year-old Meagher off a street in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy last September. The ABC employee, who had been out drinking with colleagues, was walking to her home, five minutes away.