Thi Kim Lien Do begged for her life but was killed along with her meth cook boyfriend to ensure her silence, a Sydney judge has concluded about the "heinous" double murder.
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Drug boss Dung Thi Ngo, 43, and associate Kevin Ly, 27, have been sentenced to at least 30 years' jail for murdering Ms Do and Son Thanh Nguyen in April 2013.
A NSW Supreme Court trial had been told Ngo - who headed an illicit drug group - suspected Mr Nguyen staged a break-in at the Canley Vale house she had leased for him that year to set up a meth lab.
Ly and a group of men - numbering four or five - bound up the victims in different rooms of the house and demanded Mr Nguyen return some missing drugs, the sentencing hearing on Monday was told.
"Don't kill me. I don't know anything," Ms Do screamed at her captors from a bedroom where she sat bleeding from the head.
Ly strangled Mr Nguyen and his body was found dumped by a road shortly afterwards.
But Ms Do's body was so badly decomposed when it was found in bushland months later it's unclear how she died. Justice Geoffrey Bellew heard smothering, asphyxiation and choking were all suggested.
The deaths left the Nguyen and Do families devastated, the court heard.
"(Mr Nguyen's sister) described the circumstances surrounding her brother's death as a 'recurring nightmare'," the judge said.
"One of the effects of Ms Do's death is that it has deprived her daughter, who now finds herself in foster care, of any relationship with her mother."
The judge described the murders as "brutal and callous" with Ms Do killed so she wouldn't be able to alert authorities about the circumstances surrounding Mr Nguyen's death.
"There is no evidence that Ms Do played any part in the manufacture of any drugs," the judge said.
"Indeed, her pleas for help in the bedroom, which I am satisfied were made, would suggest that she knew nothing at all about such manufacture."
Justice Bellew was unable to agree with the crown prosecutor that money had changed hands in the bloody moments before the pair was killed and, as a result, did not agree it was a "contract killing".
But, he said, the fact the pair had worked together to kill two people made the offending "more heinous" than if only one person had died.
Ngo, a mother-of-two, was on parole at the time of the murders following her second prison term for supplying drugs, while Ly had been given a suspended sentence days earlier for demanding money with menaces.
Ly and Ngo were both handed maximum terms of 40 years in prison - backdated to September 2016 - with non-parole periods of 30 years.
Ngo closed her eyes and sunk into the chair in the dock when an interpreter conveyed the sentence. Ly took a sip of water - he showed no emotion.
The pair will first be eligible for parole in September 2046.
Australian Associated Press
