‘Vile’ killer gets life

Justice served on slayer of baby and ‘Angel of Belanglo’ mum

A MAN who murdered a young mother and her toddler daughter in NSW and dumped their remains 1200km apart will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The NSW Supreme Court gallery erupted in applause yesterday as two life sentences were imposed on Daniel James Holdom, for crimes Justice Robert Allan Hulme described as “of very grave heinousness”.

The 44-year-old pleaded guilty in July to the December 2008 murder of his girlfriend Karlie Pearce-Stevenson, 20, and Khandalyce Pearce, aged 2½, four days later.

Ms Pearce-Stevenson’s remains were found in NSW’s Belanglo State Forest in 2010, but were not identified until her daughter’s remains were discovered in 2015 in a suitcase dumped beside a highway.

Holdom made a last-minute bid yesterday to withdraw his guilty plea for Khandalyce’s murder but the judge refused the application.

“His treatment of her (Karlie) showed complete disdain for her existence as a human being,” Justice Hulme said.

He said Holdom’s violation of his partner was “sadistic”, and her murder was compounded by him taking photo- graphs of her body as “a vile trophy of his own inhumanity”.

“For him, she was just flesh with a life that could be extinguished for his vile pleasure,” Justice Hulme said.

He described Holdom’s killing of the “completely defenceless two-year-old” Khandalyce as “despicable”.

Ms Pearce-Stevenson’s unidentified skeleton was for years known as “the Angel of Belanglo” due to a T-shirt found with the remains with the word “angelic” on it.

Her blonde toddler, suffocated by Holdom “probably” in a hotel room in Narrandera, was found with balls of dishcloth stuffed in her mouth, layers of tape wound from her chin to her eyes, and a disposable nappy wrapped around her skull.