- The woman and the boy’s stepfather were found guilty of murdering the boy
- He has been sentenced to at least 30 years in jail in the NSW Supreme Court
- The couple claimed the boy went into cardiac arrest after tripping over a rope tied to the family’s dogs
A mother who claimed her toddler died after tripping over a rope tied to the family dogs has been jailed for at least 33 years for his brutal murder.
She killed the three-year-old boy because he ‘looked like his father,’ ABC News reports.
Her husband will spend at least 30 years behind bars after the pair was found guilty of murdering three-year-old Joseph after almost two months of abuse at Oberon, near Bathurst, in August 2014.
‘This was a terrible crime of child murder,’ Justice Peter Johnson said when sentencing the pair at the NSW Supreme Court in Darlinghurst on Thursday.
A mother has been jailed for at least 33 years for the murder of her toddler son. File photo
The man and woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, were this year found guilty of murdering the boy.
The couple claimed he went into cardiac arrest after tripping over a rope tied to the family’s dogs.
But crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC said they inflicted ‘gratuitous violence’ on the boy in the lead up to his death, just seven weeks after he went into their care.
‘The victim’s death must have been terrifying, prolonged and horrific,’ Ms Cunneen said at the couple’s August sentencing hearing.
The jury in their trial heard the boy was aggressively shaken, shut naked and screaming into an esky full of ice, and had his head slammed into a wardrobe door.
Joseph’s aunt in August said the way her sister and brother-in-law treated the child was ‘beyond forgiveness’.