Mother loathed son she dumped in city duck pond

SYDNEY - Rachel Pfitzner loathed her toddler son so much she sometimes locked the sobbing, hungry boy outside, where he yelled: "Mummy, mummy, I am sorry".

Her callous mistreatment of Dean Shillingsworth culminated in October 2007, when she murdered the 2-year-old, stuffed his little body in a suitcase, wheeled it in a pram to a Sydney duck pond and tossed it into the water.

Yesterday in the NSW Supreme Court, Pfitzner nodded as Justice Robert Allan Hulme jailed her for at least 19 years and two months. Earlier, she'd wiped away tears as he outlined the tragedy.

"Dean was entitled to love, protection and nurture but instead she took away his very life," the judge said.

The 27-year-old had pleaded guilty to murdering her son at Rosemeadow, in Sydney's southwest. The toddler died of asphyxiation in a manner which has not been identified.

Outside the court, Dean's paternal relatives said justice had been done and they could now move on with their lives.

Hulme concluded Pfitzner had come to loathe Dean because he reminded her of his father, Paul Shillingsworth jnr, "towards whom she held ambivalent feelings".

After Shillingsworth was jailed when his son was 12 months old, his mother, Ann Coffey, cared for Dean for some time, but Pfitzner did not return him after an access visit in July 2007.

On the day of his death, a court order was made for the little boy to be returned to his grandmother.

The judge noted that initially Pfitzner was pleased to have Dean with her, but the situation deteriorated.

"She punished him severely and frequently," he said. "She sometimes banished him from the house, forcing him to stay outside in the cold.

"Dean was often hungry and would forage for food but she punished him for doing so.

"He was not completely toilet trained but the offender blamed him for that."

The little boy would seek his mother's affection, but this would cause her to become angry as she thought he was "being overly clingy".

Neighbours heard him repeatedly crying out "Mummy, mummy, I am sorry", when he was locked out of the house.

- AAP