Grant Westley Meredith to spend life in jail for the rape and murder of young Gladstone apprentice Kathryn Daley in 2008
THE brutal killer of Gladstone's Kathryn Daley will spend his life in jail.
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THE brutal killer of Gladstone's Kathryn Daley will spend his life in jail.
Grant Westley Meredith, 33, raped and murdered the popular apprentice electrician in February 2008.
In a gruesome murder that shocked the central Queensland town, he snatched the young woman as she walked away from a nightclub in the early hours of the morning.
Her 21-year-old body was found a day later in scrub near rail tracks, on the city's outskirts.
This week - almost three years later - her parents Tony and Sue sat in Rockhampton Supreme Court to watch Meredith receive a life term.
But it was cold comfort to Mr Daley, who reportedly told media afterwards there would never be any closure.
“The sentence is never harsh enough," he said.
"We have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”
The harrowing details borne out by a police investigation revealed Meredith bound Ms Daley, before raping her and slitting her throat.
When police tracked him down, they found him with thousands of child pornography images and videos.
Some of the sickening material was of children as young as six months old.
Meredith, who lived in a caravan park and then a rental home in the leadup to the murder, never knew his victim.
He was born and raised in Sydney, and had worked in the mining industry at Mt Isa before relocating to Gladstone.
On top of his life term for murder, Meredith received 12 years for rape and two years for possessing child pornography.
Detectives told The Courier-Mail in 2008 that Ms Daley's murder was the first in the town for 17 years that was not linked to domestic violence.
Anyone in Queensland found guilty of murder receives a life sentence.