Convicted murderer Robert Trebeck jailed for life

ROBERT Trebeck stood stony faced in the dock as the verdict of guilty rang out across the Toowoomba Supreme Court.

WITH the same callous disregard that he had shown for mother of three Alexis Jeffery, her killer Robert Ian Trebeck stood expressionless in the dock as the verdict of guilty rang out across Toowoomba Supreme Court.

His stony-faced demeanour didn't change as Justice Ann Lyons brought down the only possible sentence he could receive - life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 20 years.

Justice Lyons said, by its verdict, the jury was satisfied that it was Robert Trebeck who had attacked 24-year-old Ms Jeffery and strangled her to death with the leg of the jeans she had been wearing.

Post mortem examination found the force applied in wrapping those jeans around Ms Jeffery's face had to have been for at least one minute and possibly between three and five minutes, preventing blood and oxygen from reaching the brain and ultimately causing her death.

Then, continuing the utter disrespect and callous disregard he had shown for Ms Jeffery, Trebeck discarded her body over an escarpment onto the banks of the Macintyre River where her all-but naked-body was found hours later on the morning of March 16, 2014.

Trebeck had then simply walked home to the house at which he and his then fiancee had stayed with friends in Goondiwindi that weekend and went on with his life as if nothing had taken place.

The then 32-year-old embarked on a web of lies, initially telling police he had left Ms Jeffery at the park about 3am and later inventing a scenario nominating another man as being the killer.

Some 10 months after Ms Jeffery's death, Trebeck had claimed he had been on the river bank with Ms Jeffery when another man arrived and attacked them and that Trebeck had simply run off, leaving Ms Jeffery with that man.

Crown prosecutor Carl Heaton QC submitted to the court that Trebeck had only invented that scenario after he learned that the man he nominated had entered into a relationship with Trebeck's former fiancee.

Trebeck had been found guilty of the murder at his initial trial in Toowoomba in 2016 but was afforded a retrial by the Court of Appeal, putting Ms Jeffery's family through the distress of having to relive those tragic events that saw their mother, sister and daughter brutally murdered.

In her victim impact statement that she read to the court, Alexis' mother Elana Jeffery told of the heartache she and her family had suffered since the news was broken to her by police that her daughter had been murdered.

"I resent that Robert Trebeck is breathing and Alexis is not," she said with Trebeck listening from the dock across the courtroom.

"He (Trebeck) is a predator, a monster."

Alexis' step-father of more than 20 years, Christopher Allen, also read out a victim impact statement to the court.

The court heard Trebeck had a concerning criminal history before he murdered Ms Jeffery, having fronted courts on 23 occasions including 14 offences of violence.

He had attacked and assaulted former partners including punching, kicking and pulling the hair of a former de facto wife who he locked inside the house when she tried to escape with her two children.

He had then killed her 10-week-old kitten in front of her and threw the dead animal into a fire, the court heard.

Trebeck, now 37, had been held in custody since his arrest in June 2014 for the murder of Ms Jeffery and a total 1732 days of pre-sentence custody was declared as time already served under the life sentence.
 

Originally published as Convicted murderer Robert Trebeck jailed for life