Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Nettle said Adrian Ernest Bayley's offending was particularly heinous and made even worse because he had tried to conceal Ms Meagher's body and raped and murdered the former ABC employee while on parole.

Justice Nettle said he believed Bayley intended to murder Ms Meagher either because she was threatening to call the police after being savagely raped or because he took a perverse pleasure in taking her life.

The judge said the murder ranked as one of the worst ever committed in Victoria and Bayley had to be jailed for a very long time.

Justice Nettle said he had decided to impose a non-parole period of 35 years for Bayley to give him some incentive to try to rehabilitate himself in jail and he considered Bayley's guilty plea reflected some small degree of remorse.

Defence barrister Saul Holt, SC, had asked the judge to give Bayley a specific non-parole period so he had some hope of being released in the future.

Mr Holt said Bayley should be allowed to walk free again at some stage because of his guilty plea, his remorse and the fact he agreed to take police to where he had buried Ms Meagher in Gisborne South.

Justice Nettle said Bayley had told psychologist Professor James Ogloff that he tried to kiss Ms Meagher and touch her bottom outside a Brunswick laneway off Sydney Road at 1.38am on September 22 last year.

The judge said Ms Meagher reacted by slapping Bayley across the face.

Bayley told the psychologist he lost it and became outraged that she had rejected his advances.

Justice Nettle said Bayley was determined to have his way with Ms Meagher and overpowered her and raped her where she stood. He described the rape as ‘‘savage and degrading’’.

The judge said Bayley strangled Ms Meagher after she became angry, hit him with her mobile phone and threatened to call the police.

Bayley claimed he sat in the  laneway crying and panicking after he realised Ms Meagher was not breathing.

Justice Nettle said Bayley claimed that after he had raped Ms Meagher on the bonnet of a car, he tried to quieten her down by putting his arms around her and she fell back and hit her head on the concrete.

‘‘Nevertheless, you held her down with your hand ‘on the bottom part of her neck’ and maintained pressure until she stopped moving,’’ the judge told Bayley.

‘‘Asked how long that took, you said no more than a minute and that, because you are not a small person and fairly strong, you should have known better.

‘‘After that, you said, you sat there crying, panicking, because the deceased had ceased to breathe.

‘‘On the basis of your admissions to the police and Professor Ogloff, I am persuaded beyond reasonable doubt that when you saw an opportunity to rape the deceased, you took it.

‘‘Whether you formed the intention to do so in Sydney Road when you first saw her ... or only later when you got near the laneway in Hope Street I am unable to say. Either is possible and I think the former is more likely than the latter.

‘‘Even so, it was a savage, violent rape of the gravest kind committed upon a woman whom you knew was most certainly not consenting.’’

Ms Meagher’s husband, Tom, her parents, George and Edith McKeon, and her brother, Michael, were in court as Bayley was jailed this morning.

Mrs McKeon, who has not been well and did not attend Bayley’s pre-sentence hearing last week, made the effort to be in court to see the man who took her only daughter from her punished.

Jill's father was expected to read a short statement outside court after the sentencing.

The family did not plan to make any further comment.

Bayley, 41, of Coburg, had been jailed in 2002 for 11 years with a non-parole period of eight years for attacking and raping five prostitutes in St Kilda between September 2000 and March 2001.

Bayley was released on parole on March 17, 2010,

He appeared in Geelong Magistrates Court in February last year and pleaded guilty to king-hitting a 20-year-old man, breaking his jaw and leaving him unconscious.

Bayley was convicted and sentenced to three months in prison, but then appealed against the sentence.

Because he was appealing, he was released from custody until the appeal could be heard which meant he was free to rape and murder Ms Meagher.

Dr Ogloff said Bayley was a violent sexual predator who had raped a 16-year-old girlfriend of his sister’s when he was 18, before months later attempting to rape two teenage girls aged 17 and 16;  he had raped the five prostitutes when he was 29; and he raped and killed Ms Meagher when he was 41.

Dr Ogloff said Bayley would now require ‘‘intensive and ongoing intervention over an extended period before one would even begin to consider that the risks could have been reduced’’.

Ms Meagher had been out with friends when she decided to walk home along Sydney Road at 1.30am on Saturday, September 22.

A friend offered to walk her home but she declined, saying she lived only five minutes away.

Her final moments were captured on CCTV footage before Bayley dragged her into a laneway on Hope Street at 1.38am and raped and strangled her only 550 metres from her home.

At the same time, her husband Tom sent her a text message asking if she was OK.

Bayley then left Ms Meagher’s body in the laneway and went home to get a shovel and his white Holden Astra.

He returned to the laneway at 4.22am, placed Ms Meagher’s body in the boot of the car and drove out to Gisborne South and buried her in a shallow grave.

Bayley was arrested on September 27 after police had traced Ms Meagher’s phone and found it had travelled north along CityLink about 4.40am and was last recorded in the Sunbury area at 6.04am.

They then identified vehicles that had travelled along the road at that time, ran each number plate through a database and Bayley’s name appeared.

Police checked the movements of Bayley’s phone and found they mirrored those of Ms Meagher’s.

Bayley’s girlfriend later told police she had found a broken Vodafone SIM card - identified as Ms Meagher’s - in the bottom of a washing machine after cleaning his clothes.

When police later searched Bayley’s Coburg home they found clothing Ms Meagher had been wearing on the night, the shovel he had used to bury her and the broken SIM card registered to Ms Meagher at the ABC.

In a record of interview tendered to the Melbourne Magistrates Court, Bayley told police he knew he was going to jail for a long time.

‘‘I hope they bring back the death penalty before I get sentenced.

‘‘I have no life left ... they should have the death penalty for people like me anyway.

‘‘I can’t believe that it - it went that way.

‘‘I can’t believe I’ve done what I’ve done.

‘‘I don’t care just - just charge me man, all right, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll show you where she - I’ll try and show you where she is.’’

Bayley told police he just drove and ended up at Gisborne South.

‘‘I just buried her. I buried her.’’

Bayley started to cry when he told police: ‘‘I strangled her.’’

‘‘What have I done? What have I done man?’’

Bayley later told police he was crying when he buried Ms Meagher.

‘‘I cried man, and I dug a hole.

‘‘And I didn’t cry for me, you need to understand that. I didn’t cry for me, just like I’m not crying for me now.

‘‘I’m crying for everyone that this has affected, not me.’’