Triple killer Leslie Camilleri sentenced to another 28 years for schoolgirl Prue Bird's murder

THE mother of murdered schoolgirl Prue Bird says she will always pray for a miracle to reveal the resting place of her missing teenage daughter.

THE mother of murdered schoolgirl Prue Bird says she will always pray for a miracle to reveal the resting place of her missing teenage daughter.

Jenny Bird wept in the Supreme Court yesterday as Justice Elizabeth Curtain sentenced depraved triple killer Leslie Alfred Camilleri to a 28-year sentence for Prue's 1992 murder.

The sentence is to be served concurrently with the life sentences without parole Camilleri is already serving for the 1997 murders of raped Bega schoolgirls Lauren Barry and Nichole Collins.

Camilleri has still not told the truth about how and why he killed 13-year-old Prue, Justice Curtain said during her near two-hour sentence.

The judge told Camilleri, a hulking Islamic convert, his account of the crime was "implausible".

Outside court an exhausted Jenny Bird said: "I just pray one day that I might know what happened to Prue. I still don't know what happened to her. I still haven't got Prue back...(but) I pray.

"I stood up (in court) and faced him and asked him (where my daughter is). I've written to him twice. I think he's gutless. That's just who he is - he's a nobody and I don't want him to take up any more time in my life."

Camilleri, 44, admitted to killing Prue, who disappeared from her Glenroy home on February 2, 1992.

He disputed the Crown contention that he and another man, a now dead violent associate named Mark McConville, kidnapped Prue and held her captive before she was killed.

Camilleri contended the killing was an opportunistic crime, that he acted alone, and that he accidentally suffocated Prue.

He claimed he later dumped her body in a Frankston tip near where he had scattered the dismembered body parts of an unidentified man.

"Your conduct bespeaks criminality of a very high order and is demonstrative of a cruel and callous disregard for the sanctity of human life," Justice Curtain said.

"Your utter disregard of human life is entrenched ... You will remain in custody until the day of your death.

"Your account does not sit with other evidence given on the plea," Justice Curtain told Camilleri.

The judge said she was satisfied "by the combined force of the evidence" that Camilleri and McConville drove the streets of Glenroy looking for the house where a young girl lived prior to February 2, and that Camilleri and two others - possibly including McConville - snatched Prue from her home.

"You were involved with others in the abduction of a defenceless child from the sanctuary of her home in circumstances which must have been terrifying," Justice Curtain said.

"Her body has never been found and most likely never will."

It was a police theory that Prue was killed as payback for statements her grandmother, Julie, and Julie's partner, Paul Hetzel, made against those who bombed the Russell St police complex in 1986.

It was decided the Walsh St allegation could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, Crown prosecutor Michele Williams, SC, told the court earlier this year.

Mrs Bird said she still believed the motive for Prue's abduction was payback for the making of those statements.

Justice Curtain told Camilleri he had destroyed Mrs Bird's life.

"I am satisfied that the nature of this offence, your past history which includes two convictions for murder, the fact that you will never be released back into the community, and that you present as a real and serious danger to the community - and especially to young girls - all render it inappropriate to fix a non-parole period," the judge said.

"And I decline to do so."

Police fully investigated Camilleri's claim about where he put Prue's body, but found no evidence to support his version.

Through his barrister John Kelly, Camilleri had apologised to Mrs Bird for what he had put her through.

Mrs Bird rejected that apology, and Justice Curtain described it as "feeble".