A drug addict who buried the body of his dead girlfriend in a remote part of rural Victoria has been found guilty of her murder.
Toby Loughnane, 44, pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to the murder of Maryam Hamka at her home in Brighton, southeast of Melbourne.
Prosecutors said he killed the 36-year-old man in the early hours of April 11, 2021, after months of violent assaults and threatening text messages.
Loughnane then disposed of Ms Hamka’s body in a shallow grave at Cape Schanck, south-east of Melbourne, on April 14.
He led investigators to her remains in August 2023.
Loughnane denied the murder charge and claimed instead that Ms Hamka died of a drug overdose.
He wanted to plead guilty to the lesser charge of negligent homicide, but prosecutors rejected the offer.
Maryam Hamka was murdered by Toby Loughnane in 2021
Toby Loughnane believed he could escape justice, but on Friday he was found guilty of murder.
Instead, a murder trial was held with a jury hearing that lasted almost three weeks and where evidence was presented.
Outside court, Ms Hamka’s family told reporters they had come a long way towards justice.
“It’s been three long years, it’s all over, we’ve had a guilty outcome and we’re happy,” said Hamka’s brother Hassan.
‘He got what he deserved.’
In his closing speech to the jury, Loughnane’s lawyer, Daniel Sala, admitted that his client acted in a reprehensible manner toward Ms. Hamka in the months before her death and that he disposed of her body in a forest and was not found. He told investigators about it only years later.
He said Loughnane’s only offence was breaching a duty of care by failing to call an ambulance on April 11 and that he was a heavy drug user who was trying to distance himself from his killing.
Prosecutor Kristie Churchill argued that Loughnane hated Hamka and told the jury he had been controlling, abusive and violent towards her in the run-up to her death.
Ms Churchill told the jury it was not a reasonable possibility Ms Hamka died from a drug overdose, but rather that Loughnane fatally attacked her with murderous intent.
The jury began deliberating Wednesday afternoon and took less than two days to reach its guilty verdict on Friday.
Maryam Hamka was brutally murdered by her thug boyfriend
Maryam Hamka’s killer was found guilty of murder on Friday
The jury heard Loughnane sent Hamka a series of threatening messages before her death.
The messages included, ‘I’m going to smash your skull in’, ‘I’m going to (jail) just to see you suffer you dog’, ‘You’re dead’ and ‘Wait until I get my hands on your dog’, Ms Churchill said.
Loughnane also chased Hamka in a car in 2021, following her to her family home and threatening her friends, Churchill said.
The last time her mother saw Ms Hamka was on April 9, 2021, when Loughnane was yelling at her to get into a car before driving off with her alleged killer, the prosecutor said.
Hamka was seen the next day on CCTV in a Brunswick Woolworths before last being seen alive in a “confrontational” video filmed by Loughnane, in which she was half-naked and he was taunting her, Churchill said.
A friend of Loughnane later saw Hamka dead in the fetal position in the shower of her Brighton home, the prosecutor alleged.
Ms Churchill accused Loughnane of trying to cover up Ms Hamka’s murder, claiming he sent her several messages after her death, sought help from a friend to buy a steam cleaner on Gumtree and disposed of her body in a dense thicket.
Toby Loughnane faces life in prison for brutal murder
Maryam Hamka was terrified of her boyfriend before his murder.
Police found a significant amount of cleaning products at Loughnane’s home days after Hamka’s death.
Nearly two years later, in May 2023, they received information from Loughnane’s lawyers about the location of Hamka’s body, the prosecutor said.
Officers later found Ms Hamka’s bones in thick bush at Cape Schanck on the Mornington Peninsula.
The court heard that Loughnane called a friend, Oscar Newman, asking for help the morning after the murder.
Mr Newman told the jury he entered with a key when no one answered the door.
Once inside, he found Ms. Hamka sitting naked and unconscious in the shower.
“Before she turned around, she noticed that her face was swollen and her skin had a yellowish color and the Crown’s case is that Maryam Hamka was clearly deceased at that time,” Churchill told the jury.
Newman claimed Hamka was unresponsive and then found Loughnane passed out in another room.
“He seemed to have consumed too much GHB,” she said.
Newman was unable to wake his friend and returned the next day, where Loughnane claimed that Hamka had overdosed and died.
Loughnane will face a pre-sentence hearing at a later date.
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