Sleepout murderer jailed for 17 years
An Auckland man will spend at least 17 years behind bars for savagely stabbing his 23-year-old ex-girlfriend to death in the bedroom they once shared.
Karl Eddy, 40, was handed a life sentence for murdering Alicia McCallion in the High Court at Auckland on Thursday.
He will serve a minimum term of 17 years.
Ms McCallion - known by her family as AJ - was found dead in a sleepout attached to her Papakura family home in December 2012, three weeks after the pair had split up.
A jury took three hours in May to find Eddy guilty of stabbing her and sawing at her throat with a serrated knife, cutting her almost from ear to ear.
Eddy left bloody fingerprints in her bedroom and then attempted to cover his tracks by sending text messages from her phone.
Ms McCallion's family gave emotional victim impact statements, describing a creative, loving, cheeky young woman who made some bad choices about who she loved.
"They usually took more than they gave. They were controlling and manipulative and usually were too broken for her to fix," her mother Millicent McCallion said.
All four family members who spoke said the home where they lived for over two decades and where they had shared many happy memories now reminded them of AJ's brutal death.
Mrs McCallion still experiences flashbacks of finding her daughter dead, face down on the floor of her bedroom.
She said she lent Eddy money, welcomed him into their home, and gave him a car but now hated him and regretted helping him at all.
Peter McCallion said he would gladly give away the rest of his life if his daughter could have 30 more years and felt that he hadn't protected his daughter.
Her sister-in-law said she now had to reassure her three young children that Eddy wasn't coming back for them.
Justice Rebecca Ellis said the evidence against Eddy was overwhelming and he had shown no empathy for the family, except for a "half-hearted" one sentence letter.
"I have no doubt that Alicia McCallion was the best thing that happened to you. You, however, were the worst thing that happened to her."
Eddy has a history of convictions spanning his adult life including convictions for assault, breaching protection orders and assaults on women and has been assessed as having a high risk of offending.
