FOR a man in the midst of an ice binge and who, by his own admission, hadn't slept in a few days, Sayle Newson did a remarkable job of getting away with murder. At least initially.
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No one saw him intercept Carly McBride, his girlfriend of about eight weeks, after she left a home at Muswellbrook to walk the kilometre or so to McDonald's in the middle of the afternoon on a day in September 2014.
No one saw him kill her, striking her in the head and back repeatedly with a fist, a foot or an object.
He wasn't captured on CCTV. Either on his way to pick Ms McBride up, with her in the car or on his way to dump her body. He avoided the point-to-point cameras on the major roads between Muswellbrook and Scone and later deleted the location data and GPS history from his phone.
There was no blood found in his car, the vehicle he must have used to transport her from Muswellbrook to a remote stretch of road at Owens Gap outside Scone.
And no blood found on the clothes he was wearing that day.
In fact, Newson was recorded on CCTV before and after the prosecution say he murdered Ms McBride wearing the same clothes - a pair of thongs, dark shorts and a white shirt. And he had no injuries to his hands or feet, no markings you might expect if he had inflicted the blows that killed Ms McBride.
From the trial: Court hears Carly McBride suffered multiple fractures
In fact there was no scientific evidence at all, nothing whatsoever that would link him to the disappearance and murder of the woman he claimed to love.
But after that he did just about everything to put himself in the picture.
After reporting Ms McBride missing, Newson began developing what Crown prosecutor Lee Carr, SC, labelled his "public versus private persona".
Despite their relatively brief relationship, Newson told anyone who would listen - police, the media, Ms McBride's family and friends - that he was deeply in love with her and that she was the first woman he had loved in 14 years. He made desperate appeals for information, was involved in the launch of a Facebook page, offered financial reward and door-knocked houses in the area where she was last seen.
In stark contrast to those public claims of concern and devotion, Newson was almost immediately sexually involved with other women and within hours of reporting Ms McBride missing had began propositioning women for sex.
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"You should let your sister know I'm single again," Newson wrote to one woman within a week of Ms McBride going missing.
Then there was the missing person picture that was edited and cropped before Ms McBride was reported missing.
The picture, taken by Newson of Ms McBride on their way up to Muswellbrook on the day she disappeared, later formed part of extensive social media appeals, during which Newson offered a $20,000 reward for information. A check of his bank account revealed he was broke and he offered the reward because he knew she would never be found and he would never have to pay up.
Newson injected himself into the police investigation from the start, trying to deflect suspicion onto others and attempting to get information about where police and other emergency services would be searching.
He also conducted a canvass of the neighbouring streets searching for CCTV or witnesses, which police said was done not to find information but to suppress it and to determine if anyone had seen him intercepting Ms McBride.
And while volunteers and police searched for her around Muswellbrook and handed out missing person fliers, Newson was in Sydney, messaging friends about how he was driving an Audi R8.
He also knew a crucial crime scene detail that only close family and police were privy to; that Ms McBride's remains were found without her hands.
As well as that Newson claimed to know the area where Ms McBride was found "like the back of my hand" and described it to Carly McBride's father, Steve McBride, despite only seeing footage of a fake crime scene set up by police.
He also made outlandish claims in his interviews; boasts that could only hurt him. He told police he had a conversation with Ms McBride on the day she disappeared where he told her that if she ever went missing he would never stop looking for her.
Then there was the search of his home that uncovered documents and maps of the Upper Hunter which were highlighted and scrawled with notes, including a misspelled obscenity and the words "where does one hour get you from mussy?"
Prosecutors seem to have a favourite analogy when it comes to describing how a circumstantial case works.
It might be strands in a cable, weak at first but once they begin to multiply and bind they can be made strong enough to hang any accused. Or maybe it's pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; one piece doesn't make a picture but start putting them together and it quickly becomes clear what you are looking at.
Mr Carr likes to talk about shards of light being gradually let into a pitch black room.
"You let in a little bit of light and another bit of light and another bit of light, after a while you can see everything," Mr Carr said during his closing address. "And that's what is happening here. Those little bits of light shining the spotlight, shining a torch, shining a floodlight on the accused."
The more investigators dug into Newson, interviewed him, looked at his Facebook messages, listened to his phone calls, the more he shone the light on himself.
