
It was a crime that shocked Sydney, when a then 19-year-old man stabbed two 17-year-olds girls in a Parramatta Meriton hotel room, injuring one and killing the other. Now a sentence has been handed down.
The girls were celebrating an upcoming 18th birthday, when the 19-year-old man, who they knew, entered their hotel room and soon after began attacking them with a knife.
The two girls cannot be identified as they were under 18 when the crime occurred.
The offender, Kristian Kovaleff, had been planning the attack for some time prior to entering the hotel room. He told a court that he had planned to kill one of the girls in a Campbelltown motel the week before, but said he "didn't have the guts" at the time.
The following week after "psyching [himself] up by watching Ted Bundy", Kovaleff planned out the attack. The judge said it was all premeditated from the start.
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Kovaleff's original plan expanded to try and kill both girls when he found out they were going to share a hotel room for the birthday celebration.
After offering to drive them to the hotel, he went into the room with them after check-in, hiding a knife under the couch, bringing rope and duct tape with him in a bag. A suitcase and a handsaw were in the boot of his car at the time, the court later heard.