Australian woman Karlie Jade Pearce-Stevenson, 20, was brutally murdered in the Belanglo State Forest in 2008. Four days after she was killed, her two-year-old daughter Khandalyce was murdered in Narrandera, New South Wales.
It was not until years later that the family would learn what had happened to their loved ones.
Pearce-Stevenson's body was found in 2010, but she remained unidentified for another five years, known only as the "Angel of Belanglo", because the word "angelic" appeared on the t-shirt found with her remains.
It wasn't until Khandalyce's body was found, 1,200km away, in a suitcase by the side of a road in South Australia in October 2015 that Pearce-Stevenson's body was finally identified.
On Friday morning 43-year-old Daniel James Holdom, who pleaded guilty in July this year to murdering Pearce-Stevenson – his former girlfriend – and Khandalyce, faced a sentencing hearing in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
According to a set of agreed facts, Holdom murdered Pearce-Stevenson on December 15, 2008, in the Belanglo State Forest, two hours from Sydney — notorious as the location where the bodies of seven backpackers murdered by serial killer Ivan Milat were found.
Pearce-Stevenson died from severe blunt force trauma to her trunk, caused by Holdom either "stomping on her or dropping with [his] knees on her", the court heard from Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi.
Holdom took and kept "trophy photographs" of gratuitous sexual violence he had inflicted on Pearce-Stevenson, suggesting a "thrill kill" motive among others, the court heard.
Four days later, on December 19, he drove with Khandalyce to the town of Narrandera in regional New South Wales where he murdered her, most likely in a motel room, the court heard.
Khandalyce was suffocated, the court heard, using a dishwashing cloth from the motel and tape that Holdom purchased on the way to Narrandera.
“Her body was callously discarded in a suitcase with her clothing and other items, off the side of a highway in South Australia," Tedeschi said.
Tedeschi said that Holdom had a sexual interest in Khandalyce and that was one of the motives for the murder, as well as not wanting to raise suspicions about the murder of Pearce-Stevenson.
After the murders, Holdom used Pearce-Stevenson's mobile phone and personal papers to falsely suggest to her family that she and Khandalyce were still alive, the court heard.
After Pearce-Stevenson's mother, Colleen Povey, lodged a missing person's report in 2009, Holdom sent a text message posing as Pearce-Stevenson and the report was later dropped, Tedeschi said.
Colleen Povey died of cancer in 2012.
In a statement read to the court by homicide support worker Deborah Gibson, Pearce-Stevenson's stepfather Scott Povey recounted the immense pain of watching Colleen die at a time when neither of them knew what had happened to Pearce-Stevenson.
“I was annoyed with Karlie for not calling her mum on Christmas Day of 2008 and thereafter ... I became more annoyed over the next few years with Karlie as her mum and I tried to make sense of why Karlie was avoiding contact," he said.
"Had we done something? Had Karlie done something? This was not the Karlie we knew."
He described Colleen's last days in palliative care as "beyond painful" as she asked where her daughter and granddaughter were.
"Her very last distinguishable sentence a couple of hours before taking her last struggling breath being 'Is Karlie and Khandals here yet?' I was holding her hand when she died and I knew then Karlie was not coming," he said.
"My heart was ripped out of me and my soul torn from my existence when I was told by detectives that the "little girl found dumped in a suitcase", the story that I had been reading and seeing on the news, was Khandalyce, my granddaughter," he said.
"I knew then Karlie was dead."
Povey apologised to his stepdaughter for feeling angry with her at the time for not speaking to her mum.
"I am sorry that I blamed you for your mum's sadness and for being angry when you didn't come to say goodbye to your mum. We didn't know you couldn't. I know now that I will never see you to say I'm sorry," he said.
"I felt something was wrong that morning Karlie. I told your mum to ring you because I knew you were in trouble. You were so far away and we did not know where you were and you did not answer. I now know you couldn't."
Pearce-Stevenson's father Bruce said, via a statement read by a relative, that even if Holdom was sentenced to death it would not be enough to make up for what he had done. (The death penalty is outlawed across Australia.)
“No matter what sentence you receive for taking the lives of my girls, it will never be enough," he said. "I would like to see the death penalty imposed on you, but even that will not be enough.
"It hurts in my stomach and it hurts to breathe. The hate that I feel is consuming. I have never hated anyone the way I hate you."
Holdom looked down at the floor as he sat in the dock and listened to the victim impact statements. At other parts of the hearing, he shook his head, particularly when Tedeschi said he had a sexual interest in two-year-old Khandalyce.
Tedeschi told Justice Robert Hulme that Holdom should receive two life sentences for the crimes, describing them as “atrocious, detestable”, “extremely wicked” and in the "worst category" of murders.
"There is no dispute he suffered great abuse in his childhood, largely at the instigation of his stepfather," Tedeschi said.
But, he argued, Holdom's crimes were so "horrific and extreme" that life sentences should be imposed despite his dysfunctional upbringing and guilty plea.
Holdom's barrister Gregory Woods QC said Tedeschi had "tried to downplay" the significance of Holdom's abusive childhood.
"Although he has done dreadful things, dreadful things were done to him," Woods said, outlining a number of instances of extreme physical and emotional abuse from Holdom's childhood.
"Not everybody who gets devastated by a nasty upbringing turns out bad," Woods said. "But it would be an extraordinary coincidence if the conduct to which he’s pleaded guilty in this case just happened, coincidentally, to be preceded by this disastrous series of beatings and neglect from the age of nothing. It would be astonishing.
"It may be that if Daniel Holdom was brought up with his own genes in the most magnificent household in the world, loved and cared for, he would have done this. But I think it’s highly unlikely."
Woods argued that a lengthy sentence with a non parole period of 30 years or more could be an appropriate sentence for Holdom, rather than life.
Woods also told the court that he had been instructed to apologise on behalf of Holdom to the victims' relatives "for the grave crimes which he has committed and for which he confessed with his guilty plea".
"I’ll have to think about whether I give that any weight at all," replied Justice Hulme.
Holdom will be sentenced on November 9 at 10am.