A West Australian woman has been jailed for 23 years after being found guilty of murdering her 71-year-old mother with a pillow in her northern Tasmanian home.
Natalie Maher, 48, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Veronica Corstorphine, whose severely decomposed body was discovered in her bed on October 29, 2019.
But after retiring on Friday the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on Monday in the Launceston Supreme Court.
Justice Robert Pearce sentenced Maher to 23 years in prison, backdated to November 7, 2019. She'll be eligible for parole after she's served 13 years.
Crown prosecutor John Ranson earlier told the court Maher used a pillow to smother her mother on the night of October 3 at the Launceston home where Maher had been living with Ms Corstorphone for two months.
He said Maher, who was arrested by police in the WA city of Bunbury in November 2019, used Ms Corstorphine's credit card to buy plane tickets on the same day.
She booked two flights from Launceston to Perth a "matter of minutes apart" for October 5 and 11, before travelling on the earlier plane.
"(This was) consistent with her wanting to leave the murder as soon as she could," Mr Ranson told the jury.
Maher later took more than $6000 from her mother's account after it was topped up by automatically deposited superannuation funds, and also took her mother's phone, tablet computer and some jewellery.
Defence lawyer Evan Hughes said Maher denied being responsible for her mother's death, describing the case as resting entirely on circumstantial evidence.
He said he disagreed with the prosecution's position that it was unlikely Ms Corstorphine suffered a medical episode or took her own life.
"Don't be too quick to jump to conclusions," Mr Hughes said in his opening address.
