The Queen v Meade [2013] VSC 682

Supreme Court of Victoria|2013-12-11|Before: WEINBERG JA

CRIMINAL LAW - Sentence following trial for murder - Premeditated killing - Former wife struck to the head at least twice with blunt object - Motive to prevent children from being relocated overseas - Lack of mitigating circumstances - Sentence of 23 years' imprisonment with non-parole period of 19 years.

**1 Robert Arthur Meade, after a trial lasting some five weeks, you were convicted of the murder of your former wife, Sally Brooks. It is now my task to sentence you for that offence.

2 Sally Brooks died at the Royal Melbourne Hospital on 11 July 2011. Her death resulted from injuries that had been inflicted upon her when she was savagely attacked in her home at 11 Limassol Court, Donvale, some 10 days earlier, on 1 July 2011. She suffered multiple skull fractures, which led to fatal brain injuries, as a result of at least two blows having been delivered to her head with a blunt object.

3 Your defence was that you had nothing to do with that attack. The jury, however, concluded otherwise. The case against you was largely circumstantial, involving many witnesses, and a significant number of exhibits. A good part of that case consisted of statements that you yourself made to various people, both before and after Sally was attacked.

4 It is necessary to set out in some detail the facts upon which the Crown built its case, and to make some factual findings, consistent with the jury's verdict, regarding your culpability.

5 Put simply, the prosecution case was that on the morning of 1 July 2011, you lay in wait for Sally, at your former family home in Limassol Court, having planned to kill her. Upon Sally's return home from taking your children to school, and leaving her car at a local mechanic for a roadworthy certificate, you attacked and beat her with a blunt instrument. That attack took place shortly after 9.00am on that fateful morning.

6 There were no witnesses to the attack, nor was there any direct evidence linking you to it. Nonetheless, the prosecution contended that you had both motive and opportunity to murder your former wife, and that there was a substantial body of evidence to support its case that you had done so.

7 In order to understand the prosecution case in more detail, it is necessary to say something about the background of your relationship with your former wife.

8 Sally Brooks grew up in the United Kingdom. She was well-educated, having acquired tertiary qualifications in business. After leaving university, she backpacked through various countries, including Australia. In 1985 she began work with BP in Melbourne. It was around that time that you and she met. In 1986, however, she returned to the United Kingdom.

9 Sally came back to Australia in 1994. The two of you recommenced a relationship and in 1996 you lived together in New South Wales. In early 1999 the two of you were married in the United Kingdom. Following your wedding, you returned to Australia and Sally joined you six months later. You moved to Limassol Court not long after. You had three children together, Elizabeth born 16 August 2000, Archie born 3 May 2002, and Charlotte born 9 January 2004.

10 You were born in Melbourne and are also well-educated. You ultimately graduated from RMIT as a geologist. You worked extensively in this country and overseas in that capacity. You were involved particularly in project management. It seems that you also engaged in various business ventures, but these were singularly unsuccessful. Eventually, in 2011, you were employed on a contract basis as a senior geologist with a minerals exploration company, Uranium Equities Limited. That company is based in Adelaide.

11 Your marriage to Sally appears to have been strained. In May 2003, while she was pregnant with Charlotte, the two of you separated. You moved into a flat in Ringwood, but maintained contact with Sally and your children. In late 2003 you sought a reconciliation, and in 2004 you and Sally got back together. You returned to the family home in Limassol Court around October 2004.

12 However, the marriage continued to struggle. You endeavoured to start up a business which ultimately failed, and the family finances were in deep trouble. The situation was so dire that Sally returned to the United Kingdom for a short time in order to earn money.

13 During this period of reconciliation you and Sally argued frequently. Over the next few years, leading up to about October 2008, your relationship deteriorated further. Together you sought marriage counselling, at Sally's suggestion.

14 Sally took the children with her to the United Kingdom for Christmas in 2008. You did not accompany them.

15 According to the prosecution, it was about this time that you began communicating with the woman who would eventually become your new wife, Irina Arsenova. You met each other on an internet dating website. You returned to Melbourne in January 2009 and told Sally that you had decided to leave her. You in fact left Limassol Court in late January 2009. In February 2009 you travelled to Russia and met up with Ms Arsenova.

16 Having by now separated for the final time, divorce proceedings took place in the Family Court. By June 2009, all property settlement and custody arrangements were concluded and the divorce was finalised later that year. Sally retained possession of the family home at Limassol Court and custody of the three children.

17 After the divorce the relationship between yourself and Sally became still further strained. In late 2010 Sally first raised with you the subject of relocating to the United Kingdom with the children. You were opposed to that idea. You and Sally attended mediation, however, you maintained your opposition to the relocation. During this intervening period, Irina Arsenova and her teenage daughter, Valerie, immigrated to Australia.

18 By that time you were living with Ms Arsenova in an apartment in Sydney. However, in early January 2011, as I have previously indicated, you began employment with Uranium Equities Limited in Adelaide. You subsequently moved to Adelaide with your new wife, whom you had married in February 2011, and her daughter.

19 Relations between yourself and Sally continued to deteriorate. Ultimately you communicated only by email and text message. There was virtually no face to face contact between you save perhaps on the occasion when you visited Melbourne in order to see your children. You would drop them off at Limassol Court after each access visit. Such visits generally occurred on weekends.

20 It seems that the normal practice during access visits was for Sally to drop the children off at school and leave a bag of clothes on the front veranda of the house at Limassol Court. You would collect the bag from the veranda before picking up the children from school, and finally returning them to Limassol Court at the end of the visit.

21 Throughout this period, you represented to Sally that you were unemployed and attempting to raise various business projects for a company that you had called Blue Gum International. You did not tell her of your contract employment with Uranium Equities Limited.

22 In February 2011, Sally commenced proceedings in the Family Court to enable her to relocate to the United Kingdom with the children.

23 In March 2011, a month or so after you had remarried, you finally consented to Sally relocating the children to the United Kingdom, with court orders made to that effect.

24 At that stage, you were seeing your children on average every three weeks. There were arrangements between yourself and Sally to the effect that you would have access to them in June 2011. Initially, you sought such access for the weekend commencing 11 June, but Sally told you that this was not possible, and that you were expected instead on 17 June 2011.

25 The evidence led at the trial established that you had, in fact booked accommodation at the Molesworth Hotel for Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 June 2011. On 8 June 2011, you did not attend work in Adelaide, but travelled instead to Victoria. This was clearly demonstrated by the fact that telephone records showed you having travelled through Kaniva at about 9.30am on the Wednesday morning. By the following day, the phone records showed that you were in Yea at 8.33am, Yarck at 9.12am and Molesworth by mid afternoon. At about 6.34pm, on that Thursday evening, you sent a text message to Sally requesting further details of her plans to relocate with the children to the United Kingdom. You told her that you would be back home, in Adelaide, on Saturday, 11 June 2011, and that you were endeavouring to sell some interests in a mining tenement at Jamieson. You added, falsely, that you were, at that time, unemployed, but said that you would be starting a new job on 1 July 2011. You also said that you were in Jamieson, working on a project for that week, and that you would be driving back to Adelaide on the Friday night.

26 Telephone records showed that on 9 June 2011 you were in fact in the Donvale area before you headed south to Glen Waverly and Springvale. You were not then, as you claimed to have been, in the Jamieson area. Phone records also showed that you returned home to Adelaide at about 8.30am on the Friday morning, 10 June 2011. You were back at work that same day.

27 The prosecution case was that you lied to Sally about your location, and your employment status at that time because you were planning to come to Melbourne, at some stage within the next few weeks, in order to kill her. Indeed, the prosecution case was that your trip from Adelaide to Victoria between 8 and 10 June 2011 was a 'dry run', as part of your planning for Sally's murder. In effect, the prosecution argued that there was no reason for you to have been in the Donvale area on 9 June 2011 other than as part of a plan to kill Sally, in order to prevent the children from being taken to the United Kingdom.

28 On 14 June 2011, a significant event occurred. You had a conversation with a work colleague, Charles Nesbitt, after having sent him an email requesting him to see you. During the course of that conversation you said a number of things that the prosecution claimed showed the level of hatred and animosity that you had developed towards Sally. You told Mr Nesbitt that Sally was leaving to get away from 'the situation she was in', and that she had been involved in hard drugs and alcohol. You told him that your 11 year old daughter had been raped earlier that year, and that initially you had been a suspect. You maintained that the incident had been widely reported in the media and that you believed that Sally's boyfriend had raped your daughter. You also told him that your son, who you referred to as 'little Rob', had been tied to a chair and severely beaten, leaving Mr Nesbitt with the belief that your son had died from his injuries. None of this was true.

29 Nonetheless, Mr Nesbitt was sufficiently concerned by your comments, and particularly your request for him to let you know if he knew anyone who could help (which he regarded with suspicion), to create a record of what you had said. He noted that you had told him that you had hired a private investigator to follow Sally, that you were concerned about the children being taken from you (but could do nothing about it), and that you had said, in a half joking manner, that a 'couple of .22's and a baseball bat' could solve the problem. Mr Nesbitt said you became very emotional when talking about your children.

30 You had your final access visit with your children in Melbourne between 17 and 19 June 2011. They stayed with you at your mother's home in Vermont.

31 From that time onwards, you cleared your schedule at work and rearranged various commitments. On 25 June 2011 Sally emailed you telling you that you could have access to the children between 4 and 6 July 2011. She told you that their departure date for the United Kingdom would be the weekend of 8 July 2011. You emailed her confirming that you would see the children on the dates offered to you.

32 On 27 June 2011 you went to work at Uranium Equities Limited and claimed to be unwell. You were told to go home and recover. At about 2.17pm that day, you telephoned the Molesworth Hotel and booked accommodation for three nights from 28 to 30 June 2011.

33 On 28 June 2011 you left Adelaide for Victoria. At 8.27am you sent a text message to your employer claiming to be too sick to go into work. At that stage, you were already near the Victorian and South Australian border. You stopped at Horsham and purchased some items before proceeding to Seymour. You were seen there purchasing petrol at 2.28pm. You then made your way to the Molesworth Hotel, and checked in at about 3.18pm, paying for your accommodation by credit card. The following day you continued to pretend to your employer that you were sick, and said that you would come back to work the following day. There was then evidence showing your movements throughout the rest of that day. You purchased fuel at Heathcote and phone records disclosed your location to have been in an area known as Cottons Pinch, not far from Molesworth.

34 On the following day, 30 June 2011, you sent an email at 7.58am to a work colleague claiming to be sick and coughing up blood. At about 9.45am you attended at the BP service station in Mansfield and filled up your vehicle. CCTV footage showed you to be wearing a light coloured checked jacket, dark coloured work pants and dark coloured slip on work boots. The significance of the work boots became apparent later. In any event, at about 11.43am you purchased food from the Bonnie Doon road house. A later text message exchange between yourself and Irina indicated that you were, once again, close to Cottons Pinch.

35 Your phone, which was seized by police late on 1 July 2011, revealed the last recorded alarm on your phone was for 4.00am and the 'snooze' function had been activated. The prosecution alleged that you left Molesworth shortly after 4.00am on 1 July 2011 and travelled to the Donvale area where you parked close-by Limassol Court. Two other patrons of the Molesworth Hotel gave evidence that your car was no longer there when each left in the early hours of that morning, at 6.45am and 7.45am respectively. Your departure from the Molesworth Hotel in the very early hours of that morning was said, by the prosecution, to be explicable only on the basis that you were setting off towards Melbourne, intending to arrive there in time to carry out your planned attack upon Sally. There was no other reason for you to have set your alarm for that early in the morning. Given that the sun would not have risen for at least several hours thereafter, your subsequent explanation that you were engaged, on the morning of 1 July 2011 in mining exploration in the Cottons Pinch area was said to be entirely implausible.

36 At about 8.30am that morning, Sally left Limassol Court with the children and dropped them off at the local primary school for the final day of term. They were due to be collected by her at 2.30pm. She then proceeded to drop her vehicle off at Doncaster East Car Repairs to obtain a road worthy certificate. She told the proprietor that the car needed to be ready before 2.00pm that day. She left the garage at about 8.50am and was seen walking towards Limassol Court. That was the last time she was seen before she was attacked.

37 The prosecution case was that while Sally was dropping the children off at school you approached the rear of the premises by way of the back fence area and smashed a small window, allowing access into the rear lounge room. You then made your way to the laundry area, laying in wait for Sally to arrive home. The prosecution alleged that 1 July 2011 was the final chance you had to murder Sally because that was the last time you could be sure the children would not be home. Importantly, there was evidence that Irina attempted to call you at 8.51am that morning, but her call went unanswered. Your phone, according to the prosecution, remained uncharacteristically 'off the air' until shortly before 11.00am when you were located near Trawool, which is close to Seymour, about 115 kilometres north of Melbourne.

38 There was evidence led that between 1 May 2011 and 2 July 2011, during the hours of 4.22am and 11.25am, a consistent pattern emerged whereby you either made or received multiple calls, or accessed data, on every one of those dates, with one exception. Tellingly, that exception was the morning of 1 July 2011. On that day, you neither made nor received any calls (save for the call from Irina at 8.51am which was unanswered), and did not access any data, between those hours. The prosecution invited the jury to conclude that you had taken yourself 'off air' between those hours because you were well aware of the fact that, if you did not do so, you could be traced to Donvale at the time of the attack. This evidence was relied upon to support the prosecution case that you were the perpetrator of this offence, and also that it was planned.

39 Put briefly, the prosecution alleged that shortly after 9.00am, on the morning in question, Sally Brooks returned home to Limassol Court and entered the house by opening the garage door, leaving the roller door up as she went through. She walked through the garage, and passed through an internal access door leading into the laundry. There you attacked her. You struck her about the side of her head with a blunt object on at least two (possibly more) occasions. The impact of the blows was severe and caused considerable blood spatter. Sally sank to the floor never to regain consciousness. You then locked the internal door leading to the garage and walked past the stairs before leaving the premises by way of the rear sliding door onto the veranda. You then made your way back to where your car had been parked somewhere in the nearby bush reserve.

40 At 11.33am you made a call to your mother. You were, at that time, in the vicinity of Trawool. At the completion of that call you sent a message to Sally saying 'Hi Sally we will b staying at mums next week, regards Rob' [sic]. The prosecution case was that this was simply subterfuge on your part.

41 You then proceeded onto Heathcote, St Arnaud and Bordertown. You were seen at Bordertown to be wearing a light coloured checked jacket (similar to that sighted on the previous day) and fawn work pants, not the dark coloured ones seen at Mansfield. You then drove home to Adelaide, arriving there late in the evening.

42 Back in Melbourne, the proprietor of Doncaster East Car Repairs made fruitless attempts to contact Sally by phone at 12.34pm and 1.48pm. At 2.30pm that day, she failed to collect the children from school. At 2.55pm the school telephoned her to enquire about her whereabouts. Obviously that call was not answered. The school made further unsuccessful attempts to contact Sally.

43 Shortly after 4.25pm that day, Sally was found, in her injured state, by a neighbour who was the emergency contact for the children. Thereafter, police arrived, and a crime scene was established. It is unnecessary for present purposes to go through the evidence regarding that matter. It is sufficient to say simply that whoever smashed the rear window to the living room was wearing gloves, and that there were muddy boot prints found leading away from the point of entry towards the kitchen. These boot prints were consistent with the bloodied boot prints found on the tiles in the laundry leading away from where Sally lay There were no signs of any ransacking or removal of any valuable items from the home.

44 The forensic evidence showed that Sally had been severely bashed to the head causing at least two fractures of the skull. The cause of death was traumatic brain injury. There were no signs of sexual assault.

45 Later that evening, you were contacted by Detective Senior Constable Kyle Simpson who spoke to you by telephone. He asked you when you had last been in Melbourne. You told him that you had been there some two to three weeks earlier. You made no mention of the fact that you had just returned to South Australia from Victoria on that very day.

46 Detectives from the South Australian police force attended at your premises in Adelaide that night. You told them that the last time you had been to Donvale was on 9 June 2011, and that you had returned to Adelaide the following day. You said that you had seen a 'for sale' sign at the front of the house at Limassol Court. The prosecution alleged that this was a 'slip' on your part, as there was no reason whatever for you to have been in Donvale on 9 June 2011. Your access visit with your children was not until the following week, between 17 and 19 June 2011.

47 You told the South Australian police that you had left Adelaide on 28 June 2011 at 5.00am and driven to St Arnaud for work. You maintained that you had stayed at the Molesworth Hotel and worked in the Strathbogie Ranges. You said that you left Victoria at about 10.00am on 1 July 2011, arriving back in Adelaide at about 8.45pm. You made no mention of having been in Melbourne that day.

48 While the South Australian police were taking your statement, one of them noticed a well-worn pair of Redback work boots near the front door. One of the officers recorded you saying 'I didn't take them to Melbourne'. The prosecution relied upon that statement as an admission that you had in fact been to Melbourne on your trip to Victoria.

49 A short time later, the South Australian police executed a search warrant at your home in Adelaide. They collected various receipts from your trip to Victoria and clothing items that you had said you had taken with you on that trip. They took your mobile phone, your vehicle, and the Redback work boots. Those boots were subsequently forensically examined. Although the bloody footprints found in the laundry area at Limassol Court came from Redback work boots, they were not these work boots. For one thing, the size was wrong, the boots retrieved from your home being size 11, and the boots that created the bloody footprints being size 12.

50 Thereafter, according to the prosecution, you behaved in a way that demonstrated a consciousness of guilt on your part of having murdered Sally Brooks. For example, on 6 July 2011, Mr Nesbitt retrieved a voicemail message from you asking him to delete an email that he had earlier sent you arising out of your conversation on 14 June 2011 which you fully appreciated might be seen as incriminating.

51 The police regarded you as a person of interest in relation to the death of Sally Brooks. Throughout August and September 2011 they conducted covert electronic surveillance of your home, by means of telephone interception and listening device monitoring. A large number of conversations were recorded during that time, most of them between yourself and Irina.

52 In one such conversation, on 19 August 2011, you told Irina that your children would be 'dead' to you if they reached the United Kingdom, and were put into the care of Sally's sister, Alison. You told Irina that you had to prove that you were not in Melbourne between 8.00am and 11.00am on the day of the attack. The prosecution said that this was significant because, at that point in time, no information had been publicly released to the effect that Sally had been attacked between those hours. Instead, the police had said that the attack had occurred between 9.00am and 2.00pm. Accordingly, the only person who knew the relevance of the timeframe, apart from police, was the attacker.

53 In discussions with Irina, you spoke of the clothing that the police had seized when executing the warrant. You made no mention of having taken another pair of work boots to Victoria. You voiced your concern at not having any receipts for purchases made on the morning of 1 July 2011. Irina raised the possibility that the shop from which you made such purchases might have records of them, but you dismissively claimed that they would only have dealt in cash. You claimed to have travelled along a one-way bridge, on that morning, and to have been forced to reverse back to allow for a man in a 'yellow ute' to pass by. When Irina suggested carrying out a search for that 'yellow ute', you warned her off doing so, claiming it would be futile.

54 At one point, you discussed the possibility of finding someone to place you in the general Yea area, at the time that Sally was attacked. The plain implication was that you were considering how to create a false alibi for that morning. You exhibited great concern about the ability of police to track the location of mobile phones using phone towers, and you pondered whether this could be done if the phone was switched off.

55 The listening device material recorded you discussing with Irina the prospects of having someone place you in the area of 'Cocker's Sluice' at around 9.30am on 1 July 2011. The timeframe was said to be particularly significant as it accorded closely with when the attack upon Sally actually occurred.

56 You told Irina that you had become separated from your mobile telephone on the morning of 1 July 2011, suggesting that you must have left it in the bar area at the Molesworth Hotel by accident. You said to her that later that day, when you returned to the hotel, the phone was in your room. All of this was the subject of evidence from hotel staff, denying that any such incident had occurred. On the same day, you discussed with Irina the notion of sending a postcard to Alison Brooks, in the United Kingdom, with a note saying that it was from the real killer.

57 You and Irina also discussed the clothing you had been wearing when you were in Victoria. She referred to the boot prints that had been found in the laundry. You replied that you did not have your Redback work boots with you at the time, and that the shoes that you had taken with you had not been seized by the police. There were references to the possibility of finding the man in the 'yellow ute' and bribing him.

58 There was also a body of evidence concerning your travel movements on 12 and 13 September 2011. During that period you were seen to be in Melbourne and then in the Bonnie Doon area. You went on to Lake Eildon and headed back to Yea. You conducted yourself in an extraordinary manner, plainly designed to draw attention to yourself. You did so, as your counsel conceded, in a foolish attempt to make it seem as though you were a regular in the area, thereby supporting your claim to have been working in the Strathbogie Ranges at the time Sally was attacked. This too was said to be indicative of consciousness of guilt.

59 I have not set out in these sentencing remarks all of the evidence upon which the prosecution relied to prove that you were both the person who attacked Sally on the morning in question, and also that the attack had been planned. There was a good deal more. In particular, in relation to you being the perpetrator of this offence, there was evidence led from Mr Mark Cloris, the person who has overseen the manufacture of Redback work boots over many years, to the effect that the boots you were seen wearing in the CCTV footage at Mansfield resembled such boots. Those boots were not located by the South Australian police when they searched your home in Adelaide and they have never been found. No explanation has been proffered as to what became of them.

60 My purpose in going into these facts in some detail is simply to explain why I reject two submissions that were made on your behalf during the course of the plea. These were, first that I should not sentence you on the basis that your attack upon Sally had been planned, and that your offence was therefore premeditated. The second was that I should sentence you on the basis that when you attacked Sally, you intended only to cause her really serious injury, but not to kill her.

61 I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the murder of Sally Brooks was a planned killing. There was ample evidence from Mr Nesbitt to the effect that you had become very emotional about the prospect of your children relocating to the United Kingdom, and that you were resentful, bitter, and angry at your former wife's decision to take them out of this country. Your anger was palpable. It reached the point of pure hatred. Your reference to a .22 rifle and a baseball bat may have been half jocular, but it reflected a sinister cast of mind that was developing at the time.

62 I can see no reasonable explanation for your visit to the Donvale area, on 9 June 2011, other than to scope out, and plan your attack upon Sally. This was not an access visit, and you did not see the children. You did not drive hundreds of miles from Adelaide merely to savour the delights of Donvale. You went there purposefully, and with a view to planning, what you intended to carry out in the near future. The various documents, including Google maps and notepaper found by police in your car when it was searched, after 1 July 2011, strongly support that conclusion. The only reasonable inference to be drawn from the notations contained in your handwriting is that you were setting out locations and times, as part of your plan to murder your former wife.

63 Although I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the attack you carried out upon Sally was planned, I cannot say that the actual decision to go ahead with that plan was made more than perhaps a few days before it occurred. The 'dry run', on 9 June 2011, may have been undertaken at a preliminary stage, before you had finally and irrevocably committed to the murder of your former wife. In any event, it is the fact of premeditation, and not its actual duration, that is a significant aggravating factor.

64 The submission that I should not be satisfied that you intended to kill Sally when you bashed her seems to me to be entirely fanciful. If she had survived, she would have implicated you, and you would have gone to gaol for a very long time. Likewise, if she had survived, she would almost certainly still have relocated with the children to the United Kingdom. Each of those scenarios hardly accords with your strong desire to ensure that they remained in this country. There was only one explanation for your conduct on the day in question. That was that you intended to kill Sally, and thereby prevent the children from being taken from you.

65 The idea that this was simply a spontaneous explosion of anger on your part, when you confronted Sally out of the blue, in her home, is utterly implausible. Although I felt constrained, by authority, to leave manslaughter to the jury as an alternative verdict, I considered that any such finding, on their part, would be quite unrealistic in the circumstances of this case. So too, I am sure, did the jury.

66 That takes me to the relevant sentencing principles governing this matter. As your counsel properly acknowledged, your offending represents a grave example of what is, after all, the most serious offence known to our law. It was, of course, aggravated by the fact that your attack upon Sally was planned. In other words, this was a case of premeditated murder. In addition, your offending was further aggravated by the fact that you attacked Sally in her own home, a place in which she was entitled to feel safe.

67 There is very little that can be said by way of mitigation. You elected to plead not guilty and to contest your trial. Indeed, your counsel informed me, during the course of the plea, that you continue to maintain your innocence. Accordingly, there is not a skerrick of remorse.

68 I note also that your counsel specifically disavowed any reliance upon any of the principles laid down by the Court of Appeal in Verdins.[1] Thus, despite some aspects of your behaviour that seem to have been peculiar, including, in particular, the many lies and fantasies that you wove regarding, for example, having rescued Chelsea Clinton from 'the clutches of some kidnappers', it is not suggested that your moral culpability was in any way reduced by reason of your mental state. Nor is it suggested that, by reason of any mental condition that you may have, you will find imprisonment any more burdensome than any other offender.

69 I take into account in your favour your lack of prior convictions. Indeed, I accept that up until the time you committed this offence, you were a man of generally good character. You have worked hard, over many years, and have obviously developed a sound reputation in your field as a senior geologist.

70 I note that you continue to be supported by those closest to you, including, in particular, your wife Irina and your step-daughter Valerie. The fact that you are able to engender in them such a level of support, and indeed devotion, suggests that you are not beyond redemption.

71 Your counsel submitted that any punishment imposed upon you must be viewed in light of the catastrophic effects of the verdict upon your own life. He submitted that you have lost everything; family, work, liberty, purpose and meaning. He further submitted that any sentence imposed upon you will have a 'crushing quality' which he submitted should be tempered by fixing a lower than normal non-parole period.

72 Perhaps the only additional matter that your counsel sought to rely upon in the course of the plea was his submission that your offending did not exhibit some of the aggravating features that are present in other cases of murder. For example, there was no 'torment' in the lead up to the attack on Sally, and no attempt to conceal or defile her body. In addition, this case did not have about it any element of a breach of trust.

73 Of course, the absence of these sorts of factors does not of itself mitigate your offence. It merely means that it does not fall within an even worse category of offending.

74 At the same time, it is impossible to overstate the gravity of what you did. You deliberately, with premeditation, and without a shadow of justification, took the life of your former wife, the mother of your children, and a woman who, by all accounts, was greatly loved and admired. Your conduct was brutal, callous, and cowardly.

75 I have read, with some care, the victim impact statements that were tendered on the plea. These include statements from Sally's mother, her twin sister Alison, and your three children. These statements are, as might be expected, profoundly moving. They tell of ongoing suffering at the loss of their daughter, sister and mother. They speak eloquently of the tragic loss that all who knew Sally have suffered.

76 I should say, in your favour, that I consider it unlikely that you will ever again offend when, after you have served your sentence, you are eventually released from prison. That makes specific deterrence of little direct relevance in your case. However, the same cannot be said of other key sentencing principles.

77 General deterrence is, of course, of primary importance in sentencing for an offence such as this, a brutal and premeditated murder. The fact that you may have been actuated by what you regarded as your love for your children, and your desire to prevent them from being taken from you, provides no excuse whatsoever for your actions.

78 It is also important, in my view, that there be public denunciation and condemnation of your offending. Human life represents the supreme value. No civilised society can, or should, tolerate the deliberate and wanton taking of such a life.

79 It is no easy task to sentence someone such as you. You are now aged almost 53. You are plainly an intelligent man, with obvious skills and abilities. You could have had a happy and rewarding life. Instead, by your own selfishness, egotism, and controlling nature, you have destroyed the lives of many of those around you.

81 Robert Arthur Meade, this Court sentences you to a term of 23 years' imprisonment for the murder of your former wife, Sally Brooks. I fix a non-parole period of 19 years.

82 I declare that the number of days already served under the sentence is 820 days, not including this day, and I direct that the fact of that declaration and its details be entered into the records of the Court.

83 I shall make the forfeiture, disposal and retention of forensic sample orders sought by the prosecution, and not opposed by you.

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