Daniel Billings will be eligible for parole after serving 20 years for the murder of his former partner Molly Ticehurst, a sentence that has prompted renewed calls for New South Wales to overhaul the way domestic violence killings are punished.
Billings, now 31, was sentenced to 28 years in prison by Justice Natalie Adams in the NSW Supreme Court in Orange on Friday, September 11, 2026. Having already spent two years in custody, he could be released in about 18 years.
Ticehurst, a 28-year-old mother and childcare worker, was murdered at her home in Forbes on April 21, 2024, while Billings was on bail over allegations including sexual assault, stalking and intimidation.
The court heard that he entered the property through a bedroom window shortly before 11.30pm and stabbed her repeatedly to the face, head and neck. Prosecutors said the attack followed weeks of threats and harassment, including a warning that he would come to her home and cut off her head.
Justice Adams said Billings knew Ticehurst had told police she feared he would break through the window before officers could reach her.
“Mr Billings ultimately chose to carry out the fatal assault by doing exactly what he threatened to do,” she said. “It must have been absolutely terrifying for Ms Ticehurst to die knowing her worst fears had been realised.”
Billings drove away within minutes of the attack and recorded videos in which he said he had murdered his former girlfriend and threatened to take his own life. He pleaded guilty in November 2025.
Sentence prompts calls for reform
The Crown argued that the murder was planned and amounted to an attack on the administration of justice because Ticehurst had reported Billings to police and was a key witness in the allegations against him.
Prosecutors also opposed an early guilty plea discount, arguing that the circumstances were so serious that Billings should be among the first offenders denied the benefit since the relevant laws were introduced.
Justice Adams instead applied a 20 per cent reduction, taking the sentence she had determined before the discount from 35 years to 28. She also took into account Billings’s guilty plea, claimed remorse, lack of previous convictions, difficulties in custody and what she described as reasonable prospects of rehabilitation.
The decision has led to criticism from politicians and renewed pressure on the NSW Government to examine sentencing rules for men who kill current or former partners.
Phil Donato, the independent member for Orange and a former police prosecutor, said the non-parole period was far too short. Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane called on Attorney-General Michael Daley to investigate whether there were grounds for an appeal.
The Ticehurst family had hoped Billings would remain in prison for the rest of his life, although they had been warned that the law was unlikely to permit such an outcome. A family friend, Aidan Clarke, told reporters outside court that no sentence could ever compensate for Molly’s death.
Her father, Tony Ticehurst, told the court that “no amount of time will ever be enough” and questioned why authorities had failed to keep his daughter safe before she was killed.
The case has already brought major changes to domestic violence bail laws in New South Wales. Following Ticehurst’s murder, the state reversed the presumption of bail for some serious domestic violence offences, restricted registrars from making bail decisions in the most serious cases and introduced electronic monitoring for certain defendants.
The reforms became known as “Molly’s Law” and were intended to prevent people accused of serious violence against partners from exploiting gaps in the bail system.
However, the sentence has shifted attention to the later stages of the justice process, including whether the standard non-parole period for murder adequately reflects killings involving coercive control, threats and the deliberate targeting of a witness.
New legislation passed by the NSW Government increased the standard non-parole period for the murder of a current or former partner from 20 to 25 years. The change was not retrospective and therefore did not apply to Billings.
Supporters of tougher sentencing have also questioned whether offenders who admit to murdering their partners should receive the same early plea incentives as defendants in cases where a guilty plea spares victims the ordeal of giving evidence at trial.
Ticehurst’s murder intensified public scrutiny of how domestic abuse allegations are handled by police and courts. Her family has continued to seek answers about the decisions made before her death, while the NSW Government has withheld a review into services involved in her case until related legal proceedings, including any appeal period, have concluded.
For the family, Friday’s sentence marked the end of the court process but not the consequences of the killing. Billings will remain behind bars for now, but unless the sentence is changed, he could be free before his 50th birthday.
