She was bludgeoned to death and later had her head and fingers cut off in the upstairs bathtub.

Graham Gene Potter, who had met Kim Barry at a nightclub in Wollongong hours earlier, was convicted of her murder and served 14 years of his life sentence before release from jail in 1996.

The flat is now occupied by a female pensioner who did not want to be named.

"I bought the flat in 1992 and had no idea of its past," she said.

"It wasn't until a while later when I was chatting with a friend at tennis, who asked me how I liked my new place, that I learned it was where Kim Barry was murdered," she said.

She said she was surprised but not bothered.

"My daughter worked with Kim at Woolworths and described her as a nice girl who never took as much as an Aspro," she said.

"The fact she was murdered here doesn't worry me because, from what I know of her, she'd be a good and gentle spirit."

The woman said she never bothered to take it up with her agent because the history made no difference to how she felt about her flat.

"I love living here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else."

She said the original bathtub in which Ms Barry's body had been placed had long ago been removed.