Australian professor Lily Pereg’s killer Gilad Pereg gets life in jail

The killer of Australian professor Lily Pereg, who shot his aunt and strangled his mother, has been jailed for life after he claimed he now lived life as a “cat”.

The killer of Australian professor Lily Pereg was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of aggravated homicide.

Israeli-born Gilad Pereg, 40, shot his Australian-based aunt and strangled his mother, Pyrhia Saroussy, when the sisters visited the troubled ex-army officer in Argentina’s wine country in 2019.

Ms Pereg, originally from Israel, was married to Australian John Finlay and was a professor at the University of New England in northern NSW for 18 years before she was shot, mutilated, and buried in a shallow grave by a nephew she treated like a son.

Gilad Pereg was sentenced to life in jail over the murders of his mother Pyrhia Sauroussy and aunt Australian professor Lily Pereg in 2019. Picture: Alexis Lloret/Getty Images

Pereg maintained his innocence throughout the trial in the Supreme Court of Mendoza, testifying that he could never harm his mother but that he was framed by police because he’s a “weirdo”.

“I didn’t kill anyone; they accuse me because I’m a weirdo and because of my way of life,” he said.

“They took my firearms in the first raid, then they arrested me and, just the following day, supposedly, they found the bodies. They found things that they themselves have planted. They used all this to accuse me of something I didn’t do.

“I could never have done anything wrong to her; she means everything to me, and I cannot live without her. She came to visit me to see how I live, and they have kidnapped her; they have her in a dark place,” he said.

His defence lawyers, however, did not assert that Pereg did not commit the heinous killings but rather that he was insane and should spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital rather than behind bars.

Sisters Lily Pereg and Pyrhia Sarussi were killed by Ms Sarussi’s son Gilad Pereg before burying them in a shallow grave.

Professor Pereg with her Australian partner John Finlay.

Defence attorney Maximilliano Legrand told the court Pereg was “divorced from reality” and was sent to South America after his delusions became a problem for his mother, who had worked in the Israeli police force.

The psychosis first appeared in the Israeli Army and continued in college where he would run naked through the campus. In Argentina, he survived on money sent by his mother and lived with 37 cats while suffering from hallucinations, delusions, and the belief he is a cat, the court heard.

Police investigate the compound where the bodies of Australian professor Lily Pereg and her sister, Pyrhia Sarusi, were found in Mendoza, Argentina

Pereg told the court that he decided to “live as a cat” after being cheated in a business deal multiple times.

“After seeing all the evil that you, two-legged creatures, do, I decided to be a cat. I live 100 per cent as a cat, eat food, play with cats, and have always meowed. I have 37 cats and I am very worried about them,” he said.

“A single hair of one of my children is worth more than all the two-legged creatures in this world. I’m very worried about them, of what may have happened to them.”

The trial, which lasted about a week, was delayed after Pereg refused to stop meowing like a cat at the outset.

The jury unanimously found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison, which is a minimum of 35 years before the possibility of parole.