By Amber Wilson/The Age
and Ewen McRae
A man who murdered his girlfriend by “savagely” beating her has been denied his bid to reduce his 26-year jail sentence.
Brendan Neil, now 31, attacked 33-year-old mother Simone Quinlan in August 2015 at Melton, angry she’d “snitched” on him to police by making a family violence complaint.
After a brutal and prolonged attack, Neil’s friend Wayne Marmo loaded Ms Quinlan into the back of his ute, shot her in the head, then dumped her in a mineshaft near Bendigo, before setting the body on fire.
It was not known at which point she died.
In December 2017, Neil was jailed for 26 years, with a non-parole period of 22 years, after pleading guilty to murder.
At the same time, Marmo was jailed for 24 years, with a minimum of 20 years, after a jury convicted him of murder.
In the trial, Judge Jane Dixon emphasised the impact the murder had on Ms Quinlan’s family, as well as the shock in the wider community.
“In addition to the grief and suffering described by friends and relatives of Simone Quinlan, the impact of your crime is far wider,” Judge Dixon said.
“It touches the community as a whole when a young woman is horribly killed and her body callously disposed of. In this case, the suffering of friends and family was made worse by the period of uncertainty before learning of Simone Quinlan’s fate.
“The court recognises that no sentence will seem adequate punishment in the minds of those who knew and loved Simone Quinlan. The court must impose just punishment that balances all of the factors required by law to be recognised in sentencing.”
On March 25, the Court of Appeal refused Neil’s appeal bid, disagreeing that the trial judge’s sentence was “manifestly excessive” or that she’d made a parity error when sentencing the two men.
In refusing Neil’s appeal, justices Phillip Priest, David Beach and Terence Forrest said the trial judge had been fair and reasonable when handing down the sentence.
“We see nothing wrong with the judge’s conclusions in relation to the respective roles of the applicant and Marmo,” they said.
“They were conclusions reached after a careful consideration of the evidence, and they were conclusions that were plainly open.
“There can be no doubt that it was the conduct of the applicant that was at the heart of this horrific offending. But for the applicant’s anger with, and treatment of, Ms Quinlan, the offending and her ultimate death would not have occurred.”
