Homeless Australian fruit picker Robert Long (38) was jailed for a minimum of 20 years yesterday for the killing of 15 backpackers, one of them Irish, in an arson attack in Queensland two years ago.
A jury voted unanimously last week to convict him of murder and arson, ending one of Australia's worst mass murder cases of modern times.
Long was sentenced to 20 years without parole for the murder of Australian twin sisters Kelly and Stacey Slarke, and a concurrent 15 years for starting the blaze on June 23th, 2000.
The dead included Julie O'Keeffe (24), a marketing graduate from Limerick. She had travelled to Australia in January 2000, and was working as a tomato-picker in Childers, a town popular with backpackers because of the availability of such work.
Neither of the victims' parents attended the trial, but both are due to travel to Childers in September at the invitation of the Australian government for the unveiling of a memorial.
Following the verdict, Ms O'Keeffe's uncle, Mr Jimmy Doherty, said the family was glad to have it over, but that nothing would bring Julie back.
She had been a perfect daughter, he added, always willing to think about others and to make sure birthdays were remembered. "She was really, really lovely".
He hoped the O'Keeffe family could now get on with their lives and that the end of the trial would give them closure.
As well as Ms O'Keeffe and the Slarke twins, the blaze claimed the lives of another Australian, seven Britons, a Japanese, a Korean and two Dutch people. Long was not charged with the 13 other deaths because two were sufficient for the maximum jail term.
Justice Peter Dutney, who sentenced him in Brisbane's Supreme Court, said it was "hard to imagine a more callous and cruel crime". He told Long the distress he caused to the survivors of the fire and the families of those who died was something they were unlikely to recover from.
The prisoner could be eligible for parole in 20 years, although prosecutors had originally argued he should be jailed for 25 years without parole. His defence team pleaded for parole to be set at 20 years because he had not intended to kill anyone when he set the fire.
"I'm happy to concede you had no intent to kill, but death was such an inevitability in the circumstances that to light those fires displays callousness and cruelty that is hard to imagine," said Judge Dutney.
"To set fire to a building with 85 sleeping people is an arson of the worst kind," he said.
Senior prosecutor Mr David Meredith said he wanted the punishment to reflect the loss of 15 lives, not just the sample two.
He called Long a "small-minded and cowardly man whose actions had an extraordinary effect on the lives of the families of his victims".
Prosecuting lawyers said Long's hatred of backpackers was a motive for starting the blaze at the century-old Palace Backpackers Hostel in Childers, 180 miles north of Brisbane.
The trial heard how Long made several threats to burn the hostel and drive the backpackers out of town.
He was previously jailed in 1994 for abducting his child from his former lover's home after seeing the mother in the company of another man. He was paroled in January 1997.