James Viver

You're not going in to rob crime bosses or bikies or someone who poses a great threat in this scenario.

You're going in to a couple of retirees winding down for the night watching telly, as Liz said.

I can't see how the risk in the minds of these two men equates to the violence that they meted out.

It just seems so unnecessary.

If you're going to rob them

tie them up and gag them, you know, not fine, but okay, do that.

But why you have to beat them so savagely, that's the bit I don't know.

And we will never know, of course.

You know, to threaten them to tell them where the money is or whatever it may be.

It just doesn't stack up on a human level in so many ways.

But that particular point, I suppose, it's just the senselessness of it, really.

And

You know, it was exactly that.

The terror, as Elizabeth Makita said outside court, that is Irma's daughter, even now, that's what she cannot get out of her head.

The thing that stays with her is the fear and the terror and the pain her mother must have been in in her final moments.

That's the thing that she's lived with for 25 years.

And she said, well, you know, we'll never leave her.

Whatever about the conviction, you know, that mental scar is there forever.

No, I didn't ultimately.

And it's not my place to, I suppose, because...