After facing her third murder trial, Ammie Douglass has once more been found guilty of killing a retired school teacher before stealing cash from his home west of Sydney.
The Lithgow mother of two is due to appear for a NSW Supreme Court sentence hearing on Thursday where arguments will be made about how much jail time should be imposed for the 2016 murder of Christopher Whiteley.
Douglass and her then partner, known for legal reasons as AS, assaulted and killed the 69-year-old ex-teacher on August 6 after breaking into his semi-detached home to steal money.
At the time, she was 26 years old and was armed with a knife.
During a confrontation in the home, Douglass and her partner stabbed Mr Whiteley multiple times, killing him.
The pair stole the Lithgow man's money, including a Subway bag containing thousands of dollars in cash hidden under his mattress, on the night of his death and on subsequent nights when they returned to search the property.
Mr Whiteley's mummified body was discovered on September 6, 2016 a month after he was killed.
Douglass, who is incarcerated in Dillwynia Correction Centre, denied being there for the murder, claiming she had falsely admitted stabbing Mr Whiteley to "take the heat" off her partner.
A jury found her guilty in 2018 and she was sentenced the following year to at least 19 years and six months in jail for the murder. This conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal in November 2020.
After a second trial in January 2022, a jury was unable to return a verdict.
The matter returned for a judge-alone trial before Justice Mark Ierace in August last year. The judge then delivered his guilty verdict on September 26.
"Having regard to the evidence that the stab wound to the deceased's back penetrated his left lung and the stab wound to the eye, I am satisfied that when (Douglass) stabbed the deceased she did so deliberately and intended by those acts to at least cause him really serious bodily injury," he wrote.
"The fact that (Douglass) did not seek medical attention for the deceased, but rather left him alone in his house with serious wounds is, in my view, evidence of consistency of an intention by the accused at the time of the stabbing to kill."
