Lynda Greenwood had bright pink house keys so she could find them quickly to get inside in case her violent ex-partner was waiting to ambush her.
But they were no help just after midnight on October 20, 2020, when Jason Lloyd bludgeoned and stabbed her to death as she walked to her front door.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, Justice Geoffrey Bellew jailed him for 25 years and six months with a non-parole period of 19 years and one month.
The 41-year-old had pleaded guilty to murdering his 39-year-old on-off partner outside her townhouse at Como in Sydney's south.
He struck Ms Greenwood repeatedly with a baseball bat and used a knife to inflict multiple stab wounds before walking away.
Lloyd was then captured on CCTV footage in a nearby front yard washing the bat at a tap before putting it into his bag, walking down a few streets and calling a taxi.
"The offender's attack was inhumane, and was characterised by a level of brutality and ferocity which satisfies me beyond reasonable doubt that in acting as he did, he intended to kill Ms Greenwood," the judge said.
"Ms Greenwood's screaming, which was sufficiently loud to wake the neighbours, and the defence-type injuries which were identified during the post-mortem examination, provide a disturbing picture of the absolute terror with which Ms Greenwood must have been gripped in the final moments of her life."
At the time Lloyd was the subject of an apprehended domestic violence order and in the months before had sent texts threatening to kill her, any man she was seeing or any police officer summonsed to help.
They included saying "if I can't have you no one else can", "I will snap you in half" and referring to having "a nice sharp knife".
She once found him hiding in her room.
On another occasion when she was with him at a pub, she approached a security guard with a note saying she was scared and asking him to secretly call police.
In the lead-up to the murder when she refused to see him again, he bombarded her with texts while she said: "How dare you speak to me the way you have Jason.
"I've said it before n I'll say it again. There is no future. I wont be with a violent man."
The judge said it was obvious Ms Greenwood was in fear of Lloyd.
She decided to install CCTV cameras at her home and her selection of bright pink house keys was "eerily prescient".
"The communications which passed between the offender and Ms Greenwood reflect a relationship defined by the offender's threatening, jealous, abusive and manipulative behaviour," the judge said.
The ADVO had been made to ensure her safety.
"It was not to be regarded as some empty rhetorical flourish, pronounced by a functionary in the performance of some rote administrative procedure."
His criminal history included contravening an ADVO against a former partner, stalking and intimidating a person who was giving evidence against Lloyd in criminal proceedings, and assaulting Ms Greenwood.
Lloyd's guilty plea, which entitled him to a 25 per cent discount, was the sole evidence of any remorse.
"There is no evidence that the offender has ever actually expressed any remorse to anyone for his offending."
The judge took a "very guarded view" about his prospects of rehabilitation and the likelihood of his reoffending, noting they depended on him satisfactorily addressing his propensity for violence and the issues related to it.
He referred to the victim impact statements of Ms Greenwood's father, and her brother which was provided on behalf of their mother.
They are plagued by thoughts of her final moments and their lives have been shattered by her murder.
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