THE WIDOW of Walcha, Natasha Beth Darcy, has been sentenced to 40 years in jail for the "callous" and "heartless" murder of her sheep grazier partner Mathew Dunbar for his money.
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Justice Julia Lonergan handed down her judgement in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday morning.
Although 46-year-old Darcy avoided a life sentence, she was ordered to remain behind bars for 40 years, with a non-parole period of 30 years.
Darcy was arrested in November 2017 after she sedated Mr Dunbar with a cocktail of drugs blended in a magic bullet before gassing him in his own bed at his Pandora property on the outskirts of Walcha on August 2 that same year.
With time served, Darcy will be eligible for release in November 2047.
Darcy appeared in court virtually from jail wearing prison greens, and showed no visible emotion when she was ordered to stand up and had her sentence read out.
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Justice Lonergan told the court Darcy had been heartless and callous in her efforts to "get rid of Mathew" and had a purely financial motive to inherit Pandora, worth about $3.4 million at the time.
She said Darcy had spent well over three months trawling the internet as she planned the murder and had tried to lay a false trail.
She said the murder and the web of lies spun was "clumsy" and "ugly" and although Darcy's method was sadly successful, it did not outsmart detectives.
The court heard Darcy continued to refuse to take any responsibility for gassing her partner to death, despite the jury verdict in June last year at the end of a 10-week trial.
"The offender has shown nothing remotely resembling remorse or contrition," Justice Lonergan said.
More to come.
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