As a woman’s sentence is finally made public, a man has been found not guilty of killing a mother of two while impersonating the victim and begging for money. The mother’s body was left to rot in a creek.
To the 2019 murder of Danielle Easey at a residence on the NSW Central Coast, Justin Kent Dilosa entered a not-guilty plea.
Before finding Dilosa not guilty, the NSW Supreme Court jury deliberated for about 12 hours over two days.
Near Newcastle, in August 2019, more than a week after Carol Marie McHenry had killed Easey, her body was found in a creek.
McHenry will be available for parole in March 2035 after serving at least 15 years and 6 months in prison.
Her 22 years and 6 month maximum sentence was retroactive to September 2019.
Both Easey’s birth and death were reported on.
On the day in 1989 that an unusual earthquake shook the NSW Hunter region, Newcastle’s “earthquake baby” was born.
When the murderer of her daughter’s life approached sentencing in April, her mother, Jennifer Collier, testified in court that “she was born on the grass outside the hospital with sheets held up around us.”
After her mother warned she would call the police to report Easey missing, McHenry pretended to be Easey and sent texts asking for money.
Collier said to McHenry, “I believed you were her, and that plays on my mind almost every single day.”
Since her sister and “soulmate” Easey’s murder, Easey’s sister said that she has been consumed by an overwhelming loneliness and has turned to drunkenness and prescription drug misuse.
She is unable to work, interact with others, or even smile.
“I can’t feel it,” she affirmed.
She admitted to “Carol” that she had already gone through a lot of adversity.
Congratulations; you’re to blame for breaking me. Because of what you did, I will never be complete again,” she said.
There isn’t anywhere you can hide in this court, Carol. said Brendan Easey.
The first of many repercussions she would experience required her to sit and listen to the relatives of the woman she killed.
Mr. Easey testified in court that his younger sister was a fierce protector, a loving mother, and a warrior, recalling how she once used a “big arse stick” to fend off older bullies who tried to run him up a tree.
That was my fierce as hell sister.
He said to her killer, “You are a coward.
“I have no idea why you’re sorry. You might regret being caught, I believe.
All of those who knew Danielle, he claimed, loved and respected her, and they will never forget her.
“If you do get out, the world will have forgotten you, and no one will be sorry for you,” he said to McHenry.
The 29-year-old Easey was attacked and critically wounded in McHenry’s home, and both McHenry and Dilosa laid responsibility on the other.
Dilosa was declared not guilty after a second trial because the jury that found McHenry guilty was unable to render a decision for him.
