Killer 'obsessed with mutilating girls' jailed for life

SYDNEY - For most of his adult life, David Coulter was obsessed by "dark thoughts" of killing and dismembering young girls.

Last March he finally gave in to his compulsion, smothering his 11-year-old second cousin and mutilating her corpse.

He chose her, the NSW Supreme Court heard, because he intended to kill himself and "wanted somebody beautiful with him when he died".

Coulter, 42, from Queanbeyan, pleaded guilty to the murder and will die behind bars.

Sentencing him today to life in prison without parole, Justice Greg James said Coulter posed an ongoing danger to the community.

He would probably be driven by the "compulsion to kill and mutilate young girls" all his life, the judge said.

Coulter attacked his young relative, who cannot be named, at the inner-Sydney unit she shared with her mother and brother on March 15 last year.

He bundled her body into a suitcase, greeted a neighbour as he carried it to his car, and drove to bushland near Bundanoon, in the NSW Southern Highlands, where he mutilated her remains.

Coulter slit his wrists and tried to gas himself in his car, but was rescued by passing bushwalkers.

The hikers discovered the girl's naked body, disembowelled and with the heart removed, under a doona behind his car.

Her heart and a bloody pair of gardening shears were nearby.

She was not sexually molested.

Coulter told Long Bay Prison Hospital psychiatrist Robert Reznik he had never sought treatment for "dark thoughts ... (of) the murder and dismemberment of young girls" that had plagued him for most of his adult life.

"These thoughts exist daily, are intrusive and unwanted and have got increasingly violent and intrusive over time," Dr Reznik told the court.

The court was told the 42-year-old had contemplated suicide for several years but lacked the courage to go through with it.

Justice James said the murder was premeditated with Coulter believing he would have no choice but to kill himself if he did something evil.

"He stated that it had been in his mind to kill a child and that would be the evil thing that ... would force him to carry out his suicide," said Justice James."

"His crime was truly evil and it was made more evil by the mutilation.

"This was a crime of peculiar horror, in breach of family trust, committed against a child most vulnerable ... and committed for an abominable purpose.

"Indeed, he committed this appalling murder so he could kill himself.

"If he was simply yielding to his obsession, he killed as an alternative to seeking any possible treatment."

Coulter hung his head throughout the proceedings and showed no emotion when Justice James sentenced him to life imprisonment.

He will likely serve his sentence in protective custody.

Supporting Coulter in court, Sister of Charity Zita Barron said medical intervention could have prevented the tragedy.

"David has said to me if he was on the medication (he's) on ... now, this would never have happened," Sr Zita said.

- AAP