A Holbrook man who murdered a young mother and part-time sex worker in Wollongong two decades ago because she wouldn't share her heroin has been jailed for a savage, prolonged beating of man who refused to give him a rifle.
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Robert John Ebner wanted the weapon to take back to a Holbrook pub where he'd just been involved in a fight.
But the man feared this would lead to Ebner doing something for which he would end up in jail.
Albury magistrate Richard Funston said Ebner - who as a 27-year-old strangled Paula Bonacina, 28, in 1999 - was on a community corrections order, though "not for an act of violence", when he bashed his sister's partner in early January.
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"It's a very serious assault occasioning actual bodily harm charge, it's at the very serious end," Mr Funston told defence lawyer Emma Harrison.
He said the 20-minute attack "would require a jail sentence".
Ebner fled NSW after the bashing. Police suspected he took refuge in Wangaratta, claiming to be a bushfires evacuee.
Ms Harrison said Ebner, 48, disputed the police facts, but pleaded guilty so he could have the matter resolved.
He was being held in protective custody in Junee jail.
Ebner pleaded guilty in 2001 to murdering Ms Bonacina - a heroin addict and occasional sex worker - by strangling her with a silk dressing gown cord, before dumping her body outside a hardware store.
He was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court to 18 years' jail, with a non-parole period of 13.
Albury Local Court was told this week that the bashing victim, who was smaller than Ebner, was sitting in the lounge room of his Welton Street home before 8pm when Ebner's partner dropped the accused home.
Ebner had blood over his face, which he was wiping off with his shirt.
He said he had been in a fight at The Riverina Hotel with a man he claimed had caused him to lose his job in Culcairn.
He asked the victim for help "in putting the other man in a car boot" and "then requested the victim procure him with a rifle in case the male had sons".
When he refused and walked away, Ebner struck him to the back of the head then punched him to the ground.
He embarked on "a protracted and vicious assault".
Ebner also grabbed and spread the man's legs "and stomped on the victim's genitals".
His sister made several failed attempts to stop the attack.
Police said the victim would need more nose reconstruction surgery and had extensive deep-tissue bruising.
Ebner was jailed for 14 months. He will be released on parole on November 19.
