Orange, NSW: Molly Ticehurst murderer Daniel Billings faces grieving family at Supreme Court sentencing

The man who murdered Molly Ticehurst has long been a distant observer of the devastation his violence has caused.

Daniel Billings has appeared via video from Goulburn jail’s supermax wing in countless court appearances over two-and-a-half years, always sitting still and emotionless.

On Thursday, the 31-year-old will finally come face-to-face with the force of the Ticehurst family’s grief.

Billings will appear in person at the NSW Supreme Court in Orange, in central western NSW, for a two-day sentencing hearing that will take in the Ticehursts’ victim impact statements and expert evidence on his motive.

It has been a long time coming.

The family has endured a drawn-out legal process for more than 860 days, while also finding themselves at the centre of a national reckoning on domestic and gendered violence.

Billings, a former trainee mining driller, murdered his ex-girlfriend in a frenzied stabbing after breaking into her bedroom at her Forbes home just before midnight on April 21, 2024.

He had been released on bail by a local court registrar a fortnight before the attack, charged with a string of sexual assault and domestic violence offences against Ms Ticehurst.

As soon as he learned of her allegations of repeated rapes, Billings adamantly denied the crimes and developed a twisted obsession with clearing his name.

“If I’m going to do the time, I may as well do the crime,” he said in a conversation with a friend soon before the murder, according to agreed facts before the court.

In a compendium of scrawled notes left for his friends and family to find, Billings wrote in green texta: “Innocent!!!”

Also angry about perceived mistreatment from police, who he said threw his Queensland boxing singlet in the dirt, Billings wrote: “Make me out to be a monster, treat me like an animal, then OK, I’m going to play the f***ing part.”

Despite Billings’ calm demeanour in court, behind the scenes he has taken an aggressive approach to his court case.

Soon after he was charged with murder, Billings’ legal team began protracted negotiations with prosecutors.

With seemingly limited progress after 18 months, Ms Ticehurst’s grief-stricken father Tony Ticehurst said the delay caused the family more heartache.

“It seems to me that in life, the system let Molly down and in death continues the same route,” Mr Ticehurst told reporters in Forbes in November 2025.

The details of extensive plea negotiations that went on during that time have been sealed by the court, as is routine.

Billings finally pleaded guilty to murder in the local court on November 14 and prosecutors subsequently withdrew all sexual assault charges.

During Billings’ first arraignment in the Supreme Court in December 2025, public defender Paul Coady SC said he’d already had more than 20 conferences with him within a matter of weeks.

“More than usual,” Mr Coady told the court.

Billings’ own impatience with his case was also vented when his sentencing was delayed in May, due to the need for a Crown psychiatrist to assess his mental state at the time of the murder.

The court was told Billings refused to see the prosecutors’ psychiatrist, as was his right, and he wanted to be sentenced on the original proposed date of June 1.

A sentence date was ultimately set for three months later.

The Crown is not seeking a life term for Billings, but will argue his level of culpability was “extreme”, according to sentencing submissions before the court.

The court can refuse to discount an offender’s sentence for an early guilty plea if the culpability is so extreme the community interest in retribution, punishment, community protection and deterrence warrants no discount.

Justice Natalie Adams has indicated she will hand down her sentence later in September.

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