‘I will never forgive,’ Hannah McGuire’s mother tells her daughter’s murderer

When police arrived at Hannah McGuire’s family home last year to tell her parents they had found their daughter’s badly burnt body in a torched car, her mother’s screams echoed through the town of Clunes.

On Monday, Debbie McGuire told a Ballarat courtroom those grief-stricken howls still haunt the small central Victorian town.

“Words fall short of conveying the profound pain, immense sense of loss and lasting emptiness I have felt since Hannah was taken from me,” the mother of three told the Supreme Court.

“I am both angry and broken; every day I cry, and I ask myself, ‘Why? Why Hannah?’

“The day I found out Hannah was gone, a part of me died too.”

For the first time, a court heard how Lachlan Young strangled his ex-girlfriend on the bathroom floor of the home they once shared in Sebastopol, in Ballarat’s south, about 2.30am on April 5 last year.

He then dumped the 23-year-old’s body in the back of her orange ute, before driving to Scarsdale and setting the vehicle alight with a blowtorch.

Young then tried to cover up the murder by sending a series of text messages purporting to be Hannah to her mother in an attempt to make her death look like suicide and then feigned grief and shock at her death.

Prosecutor Kristie Churchill told the court that in a conversation between Young and a cousin after the murder, they mentioned how Young had previously referred to Hannah as “hot” and attractive.

“Well she’s hot now, isn’t she?” Young responded. The evidence drew audible gasps from Hannah’s friends and family who turned to stare at Young as he sat expressionless in the dock.

Young faced court on Monday for a pre-sentence hearing after abruptly pleading guilty to murdering Hannah, eight days into his trial, on July 18.

He was forced to listen to harrowing victim impact statements from Hannah’s mother, father, extended family, friends and colleagues.

Her father, Glenn McGuire, said he often struggled with thoughts of suicide.

“Her mother and I wake up every day to a world that feels colder, emptier and less meaningful without her in it,” he said in a statement read to the court by the police officer who charged Young.

“My anger is overwhelming, and sometimes I want to end my own life. What stops me is my wife and my two boys.”

Glenn said he struggles to accept he would never see his daughter walk through the front door or hear her laugh.

“I will never get another hug or a simple, ‘I love you, Dad’,” the statement said.

“As her father, I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to be there to guide her, support her, watch her grow into the incredible woman she was becoming.

“Instead, I had to bury her. To pick out a coffin instead of a graduation or wedding dress.

“She was the light of my life. She was kind, understanding and full of potential.”

Glenn said the loss of his daughter had devastated everyone who knew her.

“I live in grief, I live in anger, I live with guilt, and I live with the knowledge that there is nothing I can do to bring her back,” he said.

Throughout the hearing, a small box of tissues sat at the McGuires’ feet in the front row of the courtroom.

Debbie wiped tears with a crumpled tissue. Glenn was at points so distressed he held his head in his hands, while one of Hannah’s brothers sat with tears silently running down his cheeks.

Debbie unflinchingly stared down her daughter’s killer, who lowered his eyes, as she asked the court: “Why would I pour my heart out in front of someone who has shown absolutely no remorse?”

Debbie said while she commended people who were able to offer forgiveness to perpetrators she could not forgive Young for taking away her vibrant and courageous daughter.

The hurt she carried daily was “so heavy, it’s crippling”, and she said that Young had treated her daughter like “discarded trash”.

She told the court her daughter was her best friend, greatest joy and “everything the accused could never be”.

“I hope every day for the rest of his life, he experiences the most intense pain imaginable,” she said.

“I will never forget, and I will never forgive. It is a burden I will carry for the rest of my life.

“There are mornings I wake, and I forget for a brief second that she is gone, and then the immense pain and suffering the accused has caused hits me all over again.”

A family friend said Hannah’s parents were consumed by their grief, and she could see their hearts breaking before her eyes.

It comes in waves: Their blank stares, sudden silence or the days they can’t get out bed.

The court heard that before her death, Young frequently degraded Hannah, body-shamed her, screamed at her in public, controlled her, stalked her outside her workplace before trying to run her off the road in his car, and was physically violent towards her.

Young’s lawyer, Glenn Casement, said his client had made an “awful mistake”, but the murder was a “spontaneous event” not premeditated.

“He lost control in the heat of an argument with Ms McGuire,” he said.

Casement asked Justice James Elliott to consider Young’s age, poor mental health, substance abuse and troubled upbringing during sentencing.

The hearing will continue on Tuesday.

For support, contact: National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732). Crisis support is available from Lifeline 13 11 14.

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