Kristian Kovaleff’s fate delayed after murder at Meriton

A calculated murderer was prepared to chop up a high school student’s body with a handsaw if it ‘didn’t fit in the boot’. Here’s what happens next in the case. Warning: Graphic content

Police at the Meriton building in Parramatta after the murder. Picture: Julian Andrews

The sentencing of a baby-faced murderer who stabbed a high school girl and then watched her gasping to death in a Parramatta hotel room has been delayed.

Kristian Kovaleff, who plotted to fatally stab a teenage girl and knifed her friend at the Meriton Apartments, was due to learn his fate on Friday but he will now find out the punishment more than two years after the callous murder.

The 21-year-old pleaded guilty in March to murder and wound with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after he killed the 17-year-old and stabbed her friend multiple times on December 18, 2020.

In May, a sentencing date was set in the Supreme Court for November 11 but that has now been pushed back to February 6.

Chilling facts tendered to the court show how calculated Kovaleff was after stabbing his victim, and repetitively knifing her friend who survived the ordeal.

Then aged 19, Kovaleff’s signature was used to sign the girls into room 111 of the apartment tower because they were under 18.

He collected them from a train station following a day they spent at their high school barbecue and hid his knife under the couch once inside the unit.

The Meriton Suites were the scene of a horrific murder of the 17-year-old girl.

When the girls were in the bathroom, he lingered at the door watching them, including the victim applying fake eyelashes.

When the victim was in the room by herself at 8.40pm, Kovaleff embarked on a stabbing rampage with the weapon he hid under the couch.

Her friend rushed to the room but he ignored her pleas to stop, directed the girls into the bedroom and continued the spree against the victim and survivor.

The former Guildford man confessed to the victim’s friend that he had always “been sick in the head” and wanted to kill someone.

Three days before the fatal stabbing, he told the friend that he wanted to kill her more than 10 times but he cared about her and “and that he would be really upset if she died”.

His disturbing attack grew more shocking when he told her he wanted to chill out instead of calling an ambulance for the victim, who was lying on the floor, staring at the roof and gasping.

As she fought for her life, Kovaleff asked her for her phone passcode and, while still wielding the knife, he told the survivor “I’m gunna get 25 years”.

“I’m gunna get a lifetime in prison. I knew if I did this, I’d regret it.’’

The survivor passed out and woke up to find her stomach wrapped in duct tape.

Court papers also revealed that on the day of the murder, Kovaleff visited Bunnings Villawood twice and bought duct tape, rope and a handsaw, which he bought “in case the body didn’t fit in the boot and he needed to chop it up”.

It was not until 10.36pm that Kovaleff called 000 — two hours after the attack.

He fled to Eastern Creek where the court heard a relative’s friend was waiting to collect him and take him to his Minchinbury home, but he turned himself in during the early hours of the next day.

Emergency services arrived at 10.45pm and the girl was rushed to Westmead Hospital but was pronounced dead at 11.43pm.

Her friend required surgery and was transferred to the ICU during her eight days in hospital.