A South Coast woman who helped her incarcerated husband hire a hitman to murder two 14-year-olds, including her stepson, has been jailed for a maximum of seven and a half years.
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The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to two counts of solicit to murder after confessing to acting as a go-between for her violent and abusive husband and the would-be hitman, who turned out to be an undercover policeman.
The husband was in custody in January 2015 over allegations he had sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, who was friends with his son at school.
The man decided both the girl and his son needed to be killed so they couldn’t testify against him.
He engaged the help of his cellmate, who, unbeknownst to the man, alerted police to the plan.
The cellmate then agreed to work with officers to set the husband up.
A plan was hatched to convince him to use someone recommended by his cellmate. Police would then send in one of their own.
The husband organised for his wife to meet with the undercover officer four times in April. Each time, she answered questions about what they wanted to happen to the children, including a disturbing exchange in which she told the officer she wanted the girl “completely disappeared, not even a bone, nothing”.
She also provided the undercover officer with a significant amount of information and photographs of the two.
She was arrested in April 2015 and has been behind bars ever since.
In court on Monday, Judge Andrew Haesler acknowledged that the woman was “under the influence” of her husband at the time of the offence, however said none of the subjective material before the court “explained or excused her crime, or reduce her moral culpability”.
“Solicit to murder is a fundamentally horrid crime,” he said.
“Here there’s an attempt to remove witnesses in a forthcoming trial. This desire to interfere with the administration of justice increases her culpability.”
Judge Haesler set a non-parole period of four years and six months, noting the woman had no prior criminal record and good prospects of rehabilitation.
With time already served, she will be eligible to apply for release on parole in 2019.
The woman’s stepson was in court to hear the sentence read out.