IULIANA Triscaru always kept a diary for her family.

She helped her mother remember all her appointments, speak to the doctor when her limited English failed her and fill the car with fuel.

Cory Breton was a good dad. He loved his daughter and his partner Miranda.

But Triscaru and Breton spent their final moments terrified and pleading for their lives, trapped inside a metal toolbox as it slowly filled with water.

“Most likely, the two deceased were alive and screaming for their lives when they were placed in the creek,” Justice Peter Davis said after a Brisbane Supreme Court jury yesterday found Tuhirangi-Thomas Tahiata guilty of the pair’s double murder.

“It is frightening to imagine that scene, let alone contemplate, the terror being experienced by the two people, who had been beaten, bruised and then bound and cramped within the toolbox.

“It is haunting to imagine the moment the toolbox slipped under the water, plunging the night into silence.

“The callousness of then leaving that scene after the toolbox had slipped under the water, knowing that immediately thereafter, the two people were below the water fighting for their lives is simply breathtaking.”

Tahiata was handed two life sentences for the double-murder on Friday.

He will be eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 30 years behind bars, meaning he would not be released before 2046.

Cory Breton’s partner Miranda told the court through her victim impact statement she was never able to “say goodbye” to the father of her child.

“I am haunted by the horrible details of how you left this earth,” she said.

The court heard Mr Breton’s daughter tells her school friends “bad people” killed her father.

“She often says it isn’t fair, and it isn’t,” Miranda said.

The little girl was just three years old when her father was killed, the court heard.

Ms Triscaru’s mother Victoria told the court through her victim impact statement it makes her “skin crawl” to think about the way her daughter died.

She said her grandchildren ask about their mum “every single day”.

The shattered mother said Triscaru helped her “wherever my English fell short” and always arranged appointments for the family.

“She made sure everyone got everywhere on time,” the court heard.

During the two week trial, the jury heard shocking details of Triscaru and Breton’s final hours and the chaotic denials, cover ups and confessions that followed in the weeks after.

The court heard the pair, both drug dealers, had been lured to a unit at Kingston south of Brisbane before being assaulted, cut with knives, bound with tape, placed inside a large metal toolbox, driven to a creek and submerged as they screamed for their lives.

The motive was a miscommunication over drugs.

Tahiata, one of several people accused of involvement in the deaths, emphatically denied the killings when he was first interviewed by police.

In February 2016, he was asked by detectives if he helped load the toolbox on to the back of his ute.

“Why would I f...in’ do that? I’ve no f...in’ reason to kill someone,” the 28-year-old said.

But later, Tahiata changed his story, saying he killed the pair.

Tahiata told police when he arrived at Scrubby Creek he helped the other man – Trent Trupp (who is yet to face trial over the matter – unload the toolbox.

“I helped him pull it out, and then he goes: ‘Oh f..., you can hear them scream, go turn the music back on’. And then I just stayed in the car, turned my music on, and I just stayed there, I, like f...in hands over the ears,” he said.

Defence barrister Chris Minnery told the jury Tahiata’s confessions shouldn’t be taken seriously, that they were “ridiculous and extremely silly” stories.
But the jury did not believe him.

Tahiata will be 54 years old when he is eligible to apply for parole.
He cried as his sentence was passed down.