BREAKING: The man who murdered Sarah Cafferkey and dumped her body in a wheelie bin will die in prison.
Supreme Court Justice Kevin Bell said Steven James Hunter, 47, who had now murdered two women, did not deserve to ever be released back into the community after accepting responsibility for “this most heinous crime”.
Justice Bell said Sarah’s murder showed Hunter’s propensity for extreme violence from which the community, especially young women, needed protection.
He said while Sarah’s murder was monstrous, Hunter was not a monster.
The judge found Hunter was not completely without morals or incapable of human feelings.
“You are not a remorseless psychopath,” Justice Bell said.
But the judge said Hunter’s prospects for rehabilitation were poor and he would always remain a risk to the community.
He sentenced Hunter to life imprisonment with no parole.
The judge said Hunter had repeatedly stabbed Ms Cafferkey, 22, and bashed her with a hammer after an argument at his Bacchus Marsh apartment.
He said the stabbing was “shocking in its ferocity” especially given Sarah, a bubbly, attractive and engaging young woman, had been defenceless.
Hunter later put Sarah’s body in the boot of his car and drove to a house at Point Cook where he placed her in a green wheelie bin.
He poured concrete into the wheelie bin over the body and was later unable to dump the bin in the sea because the concrete had set and it was too heavy.
Sarah’s mother Noelle Dickson told Justice Bell last week during a pre-sentence hearing that she experienced pictures her daughter being thrown out like garbage whenever she takes out the bins.
Hunter pleaded guilty to murdering Ms Cafferkey on November 10 last year.
A post-mortem examination revealed Ms Cafferkey had been stabbed 19 times in the head, neck, chest and abdomen.
After his arrest, Hunter, who served 13 years in prison for murdering 18-year-old Jacqueline Mathews in 1986 after she rejected his sexual advances, told police he wanted to be locked up forever.
Justice Bell said the way in which Hunter had treated Sarah’s body had been an aggravating factor in his criminality.
He said it had demonstrated a complete disrespect for Sarah as a person,
Chief Crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert, SC, had urged the judge to throw away the key and jail Hunter for life without parole because Sarah’s murder was one of the worst of its kind.
Hunter had now committed two murders and would always be a danger to society.
But defence barrister Tim Marsh had argued while Hunter realised he would have to receive a lengthy prison sentence, he should be given some hope of release when he was ‘‘an old man and a spent force’’ because of his early guilty plea and the fact he knew what he had done was wrong and had shown some remorse.
Mr Marsh said Hunter, who had spent 19 years of his life since 1986 in prison, had been assessed by psychiatrist Danny Sullivan who found Hunter ‘‘struggled to comprehend what had happened or how he had done it and he was distressed because he stated that he had genuinely liked the victim”.
Hunter, who once escaped from Pentridge Prison, was not found to have had any major psychiatric illness.His mother died in 1994 and he is estranged from his father and his sisters.
Mr Marsh said Hunter had no friends or family support and states that all his friends are criminals.
Hunter, who has used drugs since the age of 12 and had a major addiction to amphetamines, had shown a degree of emotion and expressed regret over Sarah’s death, Mr Marsh said.
The defence barrister said Hunter had shown some remorse but ‘‘that that expression falls short of a complete and total appreciation on both an intellectual and emotional level of the true horror of what he has done’’.
Mr Marsh said Hunter did not set out to desecrate Sarah’s body when he dumped her in the wheelie bin and covered her in cement, as his initial plan was to dispose of her body at sea to try to avoid arrest.
Hunter had been jailed for 16 years with a non-parole period of 13 years in 1988 for repeatedly stabbing Ms Mathews in her car in 1986 after she rejected his sexual advances. He then doused her body in petrol and burned it beyond recognition.
