Marcus Rappel's sister warned Tara Costigan he was angry she'd taken out a domestic violence order against him and she should lock her door, moments before he showed up at her house and fatally attacked her with an axe, a court has heard.
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Rappel struck Ms Costigan, 28, in the neck after he forced his way into the Calwell house where she was feeding their seven-day-old daughter last February.
Ms Costigan, a mother-of-three, had sought an interim domestic violence order against her ex-partner the day before her death because she was worried about his increasingly abusive behaviour towards her and her family.
An ACT Supreme Court sentence hearing this week heard the pair's relationship had broken down and Rappel was upset he hadn't been present at their daughter's birth.
On Wednesday, his elder sister gave evidence he'd gotten angry when another former partner had taken out a domestic violence order against him several years earlier.
Rappel had exchanged a string of text messages with his sister after he was formally served with the order in the hours leading up to the deadly attack.
One of the messages, referring to Ms Costigan, read: "She's f-----."
Rappel had phoned his sister, screaming so intensely his voice was hoarse, and yelled,"That b---- won't let me get my stuff" and, "She put a DVO on me", the court heard.
His sister said she stayed on the phone but eventually all she could hear was his car engine revving; Rappel was gone.
She tried to call her brother back but when he didn't answer, she left a voicemail message on Ms Costigan's phone.
"I just called Marcus and he was really angry, you should lock your door," she wrote in the message.
The next time she saw her brother he was in custody for murder.
The witness described Rappel as regretful, sad and in disbelief about his actions. "We all can't believe it," she said.
"He's gutted by what he's done. He says things like, 'When I wake up in the morning the first thing I think about is Tara and what I did to her'."
She said Rappel had become noticeably more irritable and defensive when he started taking ice in the lead-up to the killing but had never been physically violent towards his family.
The court heard Rappel had been unhappy when Ms Costigan told his mother and sisters she didn't want him at their daughter's birth and didn't want him to know when she was in labour.
Rappel wiped tears from his eyes as his mother, who has visited him in jail every week, told the court: "I don't like what he's done, I hate what he's done."
"He's said, 'Mum, Tara was 28. She would have lived another 50 years. I deserve to be in here that long.'"
Rappel, 41, pleaded guilty to murder, breaching a protection order and two assaults stemming from the domestic violence attack.
The hearing continues on Thursday.
