Nicole Therese Courcier McGuinness applies for parole, after completing 18-year jail term for murdering Joanne Lillecrapp
Nicole McGuinness committed one of Adelaide’s most heinous murders, but has now completed her minimum prison term. The victim’s brother wants her to stay in jail – “The life sentence she was given is not the same as the life sentence I have.”
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One of Adelaide’s most gruesome murderers – who beheaded and dismembered her victim and spread her corpse through a strawberry patch – has applied for parole.
Nicole Therese Courcier McGuinness has completed her 18-year minimum term for the 2001 murder of transgender pro-wrestler and truck driver Joanne Lillecrapp.
Her release bid will be heard next month – and Ms Lillecrapp’s brother, Ron, hopes it will not be granted.
“I have concerns as to whether she has rehabilitated and would like her to stay in jail – that’s what she deserves,” he said.
“The life sentence she was given is not the same as the life sentence I have.
“Hers has a legal end date, mine will last for the rest of my life.”
Known for her kind heart and community spirit, Ms Lillecrapp, 50, was a truck driver who also performed as a professional wrestler.
McGuinness and her accomplice, Donna Lee Casagrande, had been in a relationship for three years when they met Ms Lillecrapp.
She invited the duo – who worked in the sex industry – to stay in her Angle Park home and kick their drug addictions.
With their consent, Ms Lillecrapp took control of their finances to stop them from buying drugs.
In November 2001, SA Police discovered some of Ms Lillecrapp’s remains spread across and buried beneath the strawberry patch of her Norton St home.
Both McGuinness and Casagrande – who, in exchange for methadone, confessed to killing Ms Lillecrapp – were arrested interstate.
McGuinness pleaded guilty to murder, and Casagrande to manslaughter.
They admitted that, when Ms Lillecrapp refused to give up their PIN numbers, they had drugged her food then held her down and repeatedly stabbed her with a knife.
After striking the fatal blow, McGuinness had turned to Casagrande and said: “I can’t believe that money can mean more to someone than their own life.”
They had also used the knife to deflesh, then decapitate and dismember, their victim because her body was too heavy to move.
McGuinness and Casagrande had used Ms Lillecrapp’s own car to dispose of her body parts in five separate locations, including the Wingfield Dump.
Her head was found during the search for a separate murder victim – Japanese schoolgirl Megumi Suzuki.
McGuinness and Casagrande – who has already been paroled – were sentenced in 2003.
On Wednesday, Ron Lillecrapp said he believed the stress of the murder had brought about his mother’s death in 2004.
“No mother wants or needs to have their child die before they do,” he said.