CARLY McBride, the mother-of-two whose disappearance devastated her loving family and captured the attention of the Hunter, was murdered by her boyfriend, Sayle Kenneth Newson, who in a jealous and ice-fuelled rage bashed her and dumped her body in bushland outside Scone.
Nearly seven years after Ms McBride left a house at Muswellbrook and disappeared, Newson, now 43, was on Thursday found guilty of murder, the jury left with no doubt that he was the man responsible for a horrific case of domestic violence that became one of the Hunter's enduring mysteries.
"Youse have got it wrong," Newson told the jury as they left the courtroom on Thursday morning. "I'm innocent. I didn't do it."
Earlier: Prosecution and defence close their respective cases
The verdict, which came at the conclusion of an eight-week trial and after the jury had deliberated for more than nine days, will no doubt trigger overwhelming relief and emotion for the family of Ms McBride, her mother, Lorraine Williams, and father Steve McBride and her two children.
After Ms McBride went missing on September 30, 2014, her family had to endure a more than two-year wait before her body was found. It was another year before Newson was charged and after an initial trial was aborted and another vacated due to COVID-19, the wait for justice had stretched to nearly seven years.
Newson was charged in 2017 by investigators from Strike Force Karabi, who without any direct evidence tying Newson to Ms McBride's disappearance and murder had worked for years to build an entirely circumstantial case.
And he was prosecuted by Crown prosecutor Lee Carr, SC and DPP Trial Advocate Kristy Mulley who turned those pieces of circumstantial evidence into an overwhelming case against Newson.
During his closing address, Mr Carr told the jury that motivated by "jealousy and possessiveness", Newson had the opportunity to intercept Ms McBride after she left the home at Muswellbrook on September 30, 2014 and the "combat sport skills" to inflict the fatal blows to her head and back before dumping her body in remote bushland outside Scone
Ms McBride's body was found nearly two years later in August 2016.
But the case against Newson was an entirely circumstantial one.
There was "no smoking gun"; no eye-witness to the murder, no CCTV footage showing Ms McBride being grabbed off the street, no murder weapon and no blood or DNA.
From the trial: Court hears Carly McBride suffered multiple fractures
Mr Carr said the prosecution did not know how the injuries that killed Ms McBride were inflicted; whether the murderer used kicks, knees and punches, a piece of wood or some other object.
But Mr Carr said what the prosecution did have were pieces of a puzzle that when placed together began to reveal a picture that he said eventually became an overwhelming circumstantial case eliminating any other potential explanations for how Ms McBride disappeared and how her body came to be dumped by the side of a lonely stretch of road.
The jury, after carefully reviewing the evidence, agreed, and after seven years of waiting, put an end to the mystery of who killed Carly McBride.
Full coverage in tomorrow's Newcastle Herald.
