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Ex-husband guilty in Victorian mum’s brutal slaying

A Melbourne man who hated his ex-wife “with a burning and violent passion” has been found guilty of her brutal murder at her parents’ home four years ago.

A jury has rejected Fernando Paulino’s claims he had nothing to do with the stabbing murder of his former wife who had taken out an intervention order against him.

Teresa Paulino, 49, was found stabbed to death and with head injuries in the garage of her parents’ Reservoir home where she was living in July 2013.

The court was packed with Ms Paulino’s family members and shouts of joy were heard when the verdict was delivered.

A five-week Victorian Supreme Court trial was told Ms Paulino had been terrified of her former husband, who she had begun legal proceedings against in order to split their assets.

The pair’s two sons told the jury their father had repeatedly threatened to kill their mother, including telling them “she’ll die before I give her anything. I have worked so hard for everything”.

Prosecutor Andrew Tinney QC said Paulino had been unable to come to terms with his former wife having a new boyfriend and he blamed her for everything wrong in his life.

“He made annoying late night phone calls to her … he called her nasty names to his children,” he told the court.

“He commenced a vicious campaign of bad-mouthing her and … the piece-de-resistance of that campaign was a pornographic video that … he tried to have his sons view, falsely saying that it contained their mother.”

The court was told Paulino sent the video to his former wife, prompting her to take an intervention order out against him.

Mr Tinney said his extreme jealousy and possessiveness worsened as the property settlement came to a head.

“He had a particular pre-occupation with financial matters and, in particular, his financial position and how it would be harmed and was being harmed by what was going on … he blamed her for that,” he said.

“Within five days of him being served with documents that were going to require his attendance at court only two weeks down the track, Theresa Paulino lay dead in a pool of blood in her garage.”

But defence barrister Dermot Dann QC argued Paulino had been out collecting hard rubbish on the night of his former wife’s murder and had nothing to do with it.

Paulino was captured on CCTV at 10:00pm, an hour after his ex-wife was killed, walking into a supermarket.

Mr Dann said police had gone to speak to Paulino two hours later and found him in the same clothes he had been seen wearing in the security vision. None of Ms Paulino’s blood was found on them.

Mr Dann said two footprints were found in the front garden bed of the home where Ms Paulino was killed and they did not match her former husband’s.

“This prosecution case was oversold, it’s under-delivered, it’s heavy on condemnation for this man, it’s heavy on castigation of this man,” he said.

“It’s spectacularly light on for evidence of his involvement in this particular killing and has always been that way.”

Ms Paulino’s family were in tears and hugged outside the court room after the decision. Paulino was remanded in custody and will return to court on August 16.
-ABC

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