“I can hear them and the dogs have been barking.”

Woman found guilty of bludgeoning her mother to death at The Gap

Jury retires to consider daughter’s murder charge

Mystery ute outside house where mum Radica Zafirovska bludgeoned to death

She’s asked what else she can hear.

The now-convicted murderer says: “Footsteps on the wooden, from the wooden floors.”

But the call to emergency services was in vain.

It was already too late for Zafirovska’s mother, Radica Zafirovska, who lay dead in her bed, slain by her own daughter, who was now trying to cover her tracks.

The then 20-year-old claimed intruders had broken into the home and killed her mum with a piece of floorboard the woman kept behind her bed for protection.

But the Brisbane Supreme Court today described the tale as an “elaborate ruse” after neighbours told a jury during Zafirovska’s murder trial they heard no dogs barking and didn’t see anyone else at the property that morning.

Now almost age 23, the Brisbane teaching student was today sentenced to life behind bars for the brutal murder of her 56-year-old mother at their home at The Gap three years ago.

In a shocking twist, the court today heard Zafirovska discovered she was not the woman’s biological daughter after the murder, when police tested the pair’s DNA to try and track down the killer.

For the first time, The Courier-Mail can now detail the chilling triple-0 call made by Zafirovska hours after she killed her mother.

In the call, she tries desperately to convince the operator she is not responsible for the death.

But the operator clearly doubts the story, asking the then 20-year-old if she’s certain the footsteps she claims she hears are not her mother, dogs, or a wild animal in the house.

Through heaved whispers, the now-convicted killer says she’s “scared to leave her room”.

“OK, don’t talk unless you have to,” the operator says.

“If someone is definitely inside they might hide or run away when the police are there…”

When police arrive at the scene, they find the property ransacked and expect to find intruders.

Instead they make a grisly discovery, Zafirovska’s mother laying in bed, so badly beaten her brain was exposed.

After deliberating for one day, a jury dismissed Zafirovska’s version of events, accepting evidence the woman had killed her mother because she stood to receive a financial benefit and her mother had told her she would no longer support her in her studies if she stayed in Macedonia with her boyfriend.

Zafirovska will not be eligible to apply for parole until 2036.