Convicted murderer Allan Geoffrey O’Connor will spend the rest of his life behind bars for what a Supreme Court judge termed “the most brutal slaying of three innocent people”.
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Justice Robert Hulme on Wednesday at Dubbo sentenced the 64-year-old to imprisonment for life for the three murders at Hermidale in 2015.
O’Connor shot and killed his 36-year-old former girlfriend Rebecca Webb, her new love interest Stephen Cumberland and his son Jacob at the Cumberlands’ remote property.
Justice Hulme was satisfied O’Connor had murdered Stephen Cumberland and Ms Webb “because of his base jealousy and humiliation”.
Jacob, 28, “was murdered simply because he was present” and had to be “eliminated as a potential witness”, the judicial officer found.
“Allan O’Connor did not simply intend to kill - he intended to blast every essence of life from each of his victims by discharging his shotgun at their chest or head at close range, thereby to cause the most horrific injuries imaginable,” Justice Hulme said.
He found that on the objective facts alone, the case was in the “very worst category of murder”.
O’Connor had pleaded not guilty.
The guilty verdict was returned on Monday by a jury after a four-week trial at Dubbo.
EARLIER:
Allan Geoffrey O’Connor has been sentenced to three life sentences for the murder of three people at Hermidale in 2015.
The 64-year-old was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court at Dubbo on Thursday.
Three days earlier O’Connor had been found guilty of murdering Rebecca Webb and father and son Stephen and Jacob Cumberland after a four-week trial by jury.
Justice Robert Hulme handed down the sentence with members of the Cumberland family watching from the public gallery, and members of the Webb family viewed the proceedings via video-link.
In a highly-emotional day of sentencing submissions on Wednesday, members of the victims’ families had told of the anguish they suffered at the crimes committed against their loved ones.
The court heard the father and son had been an “inseparable pair”, and that Ms Webb had been a “fun-loving, happy person”.
Justice Hulme had said he was grateful to the family members for reading their statements.
Hearing them had reflected the “reality of this terrible tragedy”.
“[The court is] grateful to hear more about three fine people,” he said on Wednesday.
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