LORRAINE Williams had been sitting by the phone for more than two weeks when the call finally came.
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It was about 10.50am on June 24 and a few minutes earlier a jury had filed back into Newcastle Supreme Court and found Sayle Kenneth Newson guilty of murdering Carly Dawn McBride, the 31-year-old mother-of-two whose disappearance at Muswellbrook in 2014 had become one of the Hunter's enduring mysteries.
And as that was happening, Carly's mum Lorraine was about 150 kilometres north, at her home in Forster, waiting by the phone.
"I just wanted to hear one word, not two," Lorraine told the Newcastle Herald this week.
That call from Strike Force Karabi Detective Inspector Ian Wright, hearing that "one word", that Newson was guilty, that he was responsible for her daughter's horrific murder, triggered an outpouring of emotion - relief, frustration and anger all at once - and then other, more difficult to define feelings that are still raw and she says she is still trying to process.
"It's a good thing and it's not, you know," Lorraine said, trying to find the right words. "She's gone and she was murdered heinously by that thieving scum. But it was a relief that we knew that it was him. And that the jury was on the right track. And there was anger too, of course. Everything goes through your head. How she was taken and all the horrible bits. But we know that he did it and that he will be accountable for what he has done to my girl."
That fortnight of waiting for a verdict, for an answer to a question that had come to define Lorraine's life and her daughter's tragic death, had felt like "forever".
But in reality, Lorraine had been waiting for that call for nearly seven years.
Seven years she describes as a living hell, a rollercoaster that started with a phone call and would end with one.
Seven years that had been spent worrying and wondering. Hoping for good news and then fearing the worst.
Naturally, during Newson's eight-week trial there was more focus on who killed Carly McBride than on who she was and what she meant to so many people.
But Lorraine wants everyone to know the loving mother, proud Bundjalung woman, animal lover and devoted nurse behind the "big gorgeous toothy smile" that you see in so many of Carly's photos.
And she wants her to be remembered for the life she lived and not the terrible way she died.
"Carly was a beautiful, strong, proud Bundjalung woman inside and out," she said. "She had the heart of a lion and would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. When she entered a room her big gorgeous toothy smile and her contagious laugh would brighten up anyone's life."
Lorraine said her daughter's two young children were "her life".
"When she was with her kids her love and light shone the brightest," Lorraine said. "She loved them more than life itself and they were her world. All she wanted was to be a good mum."
She said her daughter battled depression and anxiety for eight years before she was diagnosed with bipolar not long before she was murdered.
"Her life wasn't easy," Lorraine said. "She was a battler and she courageously fought her demons as best as she could."
Carly loved animals and had aspirations of becoming a vet after working as an aged-care and mental health nurse, often alongside her mother.
"She loved animals and often brought strays home when she was a kid," she said. "We bought her a horse for her 16th birthday and she loved Bobbie and they had a lot of good times and fun together for years. She was a dedicated nurse. She had a nursing career both in aged care and in mental health. She loved the work and the residents fell in love with her instantly. She was a caring soul."
And Lorraine said her daughter was also an "adventurous soul".
"She loved the beach and the bush and she jumped out of the first plane she went up in," she said. "She was that type of person. She was a free spirit. She loved life, experiencing what she could. Our loss and grief is inconsolable. Carly is missed deeply every day. We have lost a beautiful soul and she will stay strong in our hearts forever as she is unforgettable."
Carly was last seen leaving a house at Muswellbrook about 2pm on September 30, 2014. She had come to the Hunter Valley with Newson to visit her daughter, but left before the young girl returned home from daycare.
She was later reported missing by Newson, her boyfriend of about eight weeks, who then launched a desperate search and made a "manic" phone call to Lorraine to tell her daughter was "gone".
But in reality she was never missing, she had been murdered. Newson had intercepted her after she left the house in Calgaroo Avenue to walk the kilometre or so to McDonald's and killed her by inflicting a number of blows to her head and back before dumping her body about 25 metres from Bunnan Road at Owens Gap.
The case against Newson was entirely circumstantial. There were no eye-witnesses, no CCTV and no blood or DNA that linked him to Carly's death. But his big mouth and his actions after she "disappeared" left the jury with no doubt he was the man who had killed her in a jealous and ice-fuelled rage.
Lorraine says she has no doubt about the motive.
"There was no other reason for it," she said. "He was a jealous, scum of the earth murdering coward. And didn't deserve to even know my girl."
For Lorraine there was no "justice" when Newson was found guilty, it didn't equate to the horrific way in which her daughter was killed.
And there was no closure, either. That's a word used by other people who haven't lost a loved one like this.
"There is no closure in it, I don't understand that word closure," Lorraine said. "Justice doesn't ring true. I think solace is the best way to describe it. We can take some solace that he will be accountable for what he has done." Lorraine said she wasn't surprised when, immediately after the verdict, Newson professed his innocence.
"Youse have got it wrong," Newson told the jury after the verdict. "I'm innocent. I didn't do it."
She said those claims were just more lies as Newson struggled to find something to cling onto.
A day after he was found guilty, Newson's solicitor Mark Ramsland lodged a notice of intention to appeal against the murder conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Lorraine said she despises Newson for taking her daughter's life and then staying quiet for years, while she and Carly's father, Steve McBride, clung to hope that she would be found alive and made desperate public appeals for information.
Lorraine praised the hard work and dedication to her daughter's case that Strike Force Karabi detectives and prosecutors - who she dubbed "The A Team" - had put in over the past seven years.
"They were just amazing," Lorraine said. "Especially [Detective Inspector] Ian [Wright]. He saw what [Newson] really was. And [Detective Senior Constable] Simone [Bottrill] and [Detective Senior Constable] Dan [Robins] and of course [Crown prosecutor] Lee [Carr, SC] and [DPP Trial Advocate] Kristy Mulley and my court support person Louise O'Neill. I can't say enough about them. I am just in awe of them. What they have done to keep him off the streets and stop him from doing it to somebody else. We are like family now."
In her attempt to adequately sum up her daughter's life and the impact of her death, Lorraine had scrawled words on a piece of paper.
But now her tears were making them hard to read.
"She was irreplaceable," Lorraine says. "A one in a million. And I can still hear her laugh ringing in my ears. At the end of every message she wrote to me she would always say 'keep on smiling mumma, love you'."
- 1800RESPECT
Her children were her life. When she was with her kids her love and light shone the brightest. She loved them more than life itself and they were her world.
- Lorraine Williams said of her daughter Carly McBride, a 31-year-old mother-of-two who was brutally murdered by her boyfriend, Sayle Kenneth Newson, at Muswellbrook in 2014.
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