Life sentence for Phillip Island ex-wife killer Adrian Basham
Killer Adrian Basham will spend life behind bars for the ambush murder of his ex-wife at Phillip Island.
Justice Lesley Taylor found Basham’s murder of Samantha Fraser in her Cowes home in 2018 was premeditated conduct was deserving of a minimum jail term of 30 years.
Adrian Basham (right) leaves the Supreme Court after a hearing last year.Credit:Paul Jeffers
“I find you intended and planned for Ms Fraser to die,” Justice Lesley Taylor said in the Victorian Supreme Court.
“You subjected her to a beating in which she sustained multiple injuries. You then tied a noose around her neck before hanging her from garage door. By any measure, your offending was extremely grave.
“Her last conscious moments would’ve passed in terror.”
Fraser and Basham’s children were 9, 7 and 5 when the man killed his former partner in the garage of their family home on July 23, 2018.
Samantha Fraser (left) and CCTV images of Adrian Basham on his motorcycle and outside her home.
The pair had been married for about 10 years before separating in 2017.
During the trial, the jury was told CCTV footage showed Basham park his motorcycle near Fraser’s Cowes home before entering the property on the day she was murdered.
Basham then ambushed Fraser, put a rope around her neck and arranged for the scene to appear as though she killed herself.
Basham’s DNA was later found under Fraser’s fingernails and on the rope.
Taylor found Basham laid in wait outside Fraser’s home while she took the pair’s children to school, before attacking her in the garage.
Basham, 46, was found guilty of murder in April 2022.
“You still maintain … the fiction she was responsible for her own death,” Taylor said.
More to come.
If you or anyone you know needs support call Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.
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