Australian killer Dad gets life

File photo / Supplied.

MELBOURNE - Cindy Gambino's life sentence began the day her three precious boys were murdered at the hands of the man she once loved.

A dripping wet and hysterical Robert Farquharson knocked on the door of her country Victorian home. His words would haunt her for the rest of her life.

"I've killed the kids," Farquharson said.

"They're in the water."

Her beloved sons Jai, 10, Tyler, seven, and Bailey, two, were dead - murdered by their dad who drove them into a dark, deep dam during a Father's Day access visit.

It was September 4, 2005.

Last Sunday, Ms Gambino married her new partner Stephen Moules at a Winchelsea church not far from where the boys died.

The couple now have two sons of their own.

But Ms Gambino still has her life sentence.

Today, Farquharson was also handed a life sentence, after having been convicted for a second time of murdering the boys.

Justice Lex Lasry, one of Victoria's most experienced legal practitioners, said in sentencing Farquharson "the tragedy of this case almost defies imagination".

"Your crimes have devastated a significant number of people," he said.

"Primary among them is your ex-wife Cindy Gambino, the mother of these three children."

Farquharson's life sentence has an end date, which will come in a bit over 30 years with time already served.

Ms Gambino's life sentence does not come with a minimum term.

"It's never going to be enough," Ms Gambino said of the sentence.

"It's a life sentence for me. It should be a life sentence for him."

For the past five years Ms Gambino's only contact with her sons has been at their gravesite.

It is the only physical connection she has with them.

Sometimes, Ms Gambino sleeps on a blanket next to her boys' graves.

It is the only way she can feel peace of mind.

She asks her boys for advice and asks them what really happened the night they died.

In May, Ms Gambino gave evidence against Farquharson in the hope he would be convicted of murder.

She sat through hearing the torturous screams of her own call to police and a barrage of questions under cross-examination, including whether she had desecrated her own sons' graves.

By the time Ms Gambino reached the dam, on September 4, 2005, she was hysterical.

It was pitch black and she could not see where the car had gone.

Ms Gambino called police.

The call is harrowing, she wails for her lost sons as the operator calmly tries to get details from her.

"I've gotta find my kids," she said.

"The car's submerged, yes! My children are gone.

"Oh my babies. I want my babies!"

A few hours earlier, Ms Gambino had been all smiles as she said goodbye to her sons, dropping them off at Farquharson's house for Father's Day.

Ms Gambino helped the boys give Farquharson his Father's Day present - a framed photo of his three sons.

Then, to her greatest regret, she asked Jai if they wanted to have dinner with their dad.

As Ms Gambino left she gave them all a hug.

The boys would spend their last hours alive buying toys from Kmart with Farquharson and eating dinner at KFC.

It would be Ms Gambino's "blackest ever night".

Robert Donald William Farquharson, 41, is a short, barrel-chested man who displayed little emotion throughout the trial and sentencing.

He wore a shirt with a tie, but no jacket, and sat in the dock still and usually expressionless.

As his crimes were described during sentencing Farquharson shook his head and screwed up his face.

Outside court, Farquharson's supporters maintained his innocence.

"Rob is a broken man, a traumatised and deeply grieving parent who loves his children," supporter Anne Irwin told reporters, reading from a statement.

"The justice system has failed three young boys and their loving father and we are horrified that Rob is now faced with further trauma, grief and loss of liberty as a result."

During his relationship with Ms Gambino, Farquharson worked for the local shire before starting a Jim's Mowing franchise, which didn't go well and ended up costing the couple a lot of money.

Eventually Farquharson took a job cleaning windows at the Cumberland Resort in Lorne.

But Ms Gambino found that Farquharson was always "whingeing and moaning".

Their love evaporated and they separated.

It was agreed Ms Gambino would have the boys and that Farquharson would have access every second weekend.

A few days after the deaths, even before Ms Gambino had buried her boys, the Victoria Police Homicide Squad had taken over the investigation.

Less than two weeks before the family was to have its first Christmas without the boys, police charged Farquharson with three counts of murder.

During his trial Ms Gambino was permitted to sit in a special seat in the body of the court as she gave evidence and had a court support worker constantly by her side to comfort her.

Frequently the court proceedings were halted as she burst into uncontrollable tears and shrieks and screams.

Justice Lasry described her evidence as the most harrowing he had listened to in his legal career, one that has included defending a man condemned to hang.

Cross-examination began with a question from Farquharson's barrister Peter Morrissey SC about whether Ms Gambino had bared her teeth at Farquharson during her evidence.

Mr Morrissey asked: "And it is your wish that he be convicted of murder, correct?"

The grieving mother replied: "Correct."

Later, a question about Farquharson's name being chiselled off the children's graves tipped Ms Gambino over the edge.

"Oh, you disgust me," was her angry reply.

"That's my children's resting place. That was my children's headstone ... And I can't help it if my children's father's name was Robert Farquharson. I would never ever do anything like that to my children. How dare you?"

Mr Morrissey changed the topic to the children's funeral.

He showed her a photo of her embracing her former husband. She squashed it into a ball and threw it to the floor.

By contrast, Farquharson's evidence was straightforward and without emotion.

His voice broke several times as he described his boys, especially when he talked about Jai's junior football premiership a few weeks before his sons died.

Asked whether he deliberately drowned the boys and left them to die, he replied: "That's not true at all."

Farquharson told the jury he was driving near a bridge when he began coughing on the night the boys died.

"I just remember I started coughing and then it just grabbed hold of me and that's all I remember," he told the court.

Farquharson said the next thing he remembers is Jai calling out to him.

Tyler was also a bit upset, Farquharson said.

"I said: 'Just settle and I'll try and get youse all out of here'."

But Farquharson swam to shore without his boys.

Ms Gambino may have got her wish and seen her former husband convicted of murder, but with her boys dead, her life sentence will not have an end date.

- AAP