Justin Kent Dilosa pleaded not guilty to murdering Danielle Easey at a home on the NSW Central Coast in 2019.
The NSW Supreme Court jury deliberated for almost 12 hours across two days before finding Dilosa not guilty.
McHenry has been jailed at least 15 years and six months, eligible for parole in March 2035.
Her maximum sentence of 22 years and six months was backdated to September 2019.
Easey’s birth and death both made news.
Newcastle’s “earthquake baby” came into the world on the day the NSW Hunter region was rocked by a rare tremor in 1989.
“She was born on the grass outside the hospital with sheets held up around us,” her mother, Jennifer Collier, told a court when the woman who murdered her daughter approached sentencing in April.
“I believed you were her, and that plays on my mind nearly every single day,” Collier told McHenry.
Easey’s sister said she has been filled with a consuming emptiness, falling into alcoholism and prescription drug abuse since the murder of her sister and “soulmate”.
She can’t work, socialise, or even experience joy.
“I can’t feel it,” she said.
She told “Carol” she had already experienced much hardship in her life.
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“Congratulations, it was you who broke me. I will never be whole again due to your actions,” she said.
Easey’s brother asked a question from the witness box.
“There’s nowhere for you to hide in this court, is there Carol?” Brendan Easey said.
She had to sit and listen to the family of the woman she murdered, the first of many consequences she would face.
His younger sister was a protective, loving mother and a fighter, Mr Easey said, telling the court she once chased off older bullies who had run him up a tree with a “big arse stick”.
“That was my sister, fierce as hell.”
“You are a coward,” he told her murderer.
“I don’t even think you’re sorry. I think you might be sorry you got caught.”
He said Danielle was loved and respected by all who knew her, who will remember her for the rest of their lives.
“If you do get out (of jail) the world will have forgotten you, and no one will be sorry for you,” he told McHenry.
McHenry and Dilosa each blamed the other for attacking and fatally wounding the 29-year-old Easey in McHenry’s home.
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