In one moment killer Simon Gittany revealed the jealous man lurking behind the smile

A year and three days after Simon Gittany was charged with the murder of his fiancee, he posted a video on YouTube in an attempt to show the world how much they had loved each other.

The blurry iPhone video records Lisa Cecilia Harnum's 30th, and last, birthday party. The tall, willowy Canadian stands, a little awkwardly, as Gittany delivers a birthday speech to his family and friends. It culminates in a surprise marriage proposal.

"Cecilia, baby," Gittany says, kneeling and presenting her with a ring. The young woman covers her face with her hands, nods and then smothers him in a tearful embrace.

Passion and pain: Rachelle Louise outside court on Wednesday. Photo: Danielle Smith

For, after the storm of publicity unleashed by Gittany's murder conviction this week has cleared, after the wails of his relatives ceased echoing through the halls of the Supreme Court and, after the printed revelations of his violence as a youth have yellowed in the sun, what remains is a crime of domestic violence by a man who believed that women were placed on the earth to serve him.

It was in this context, Justice Lucy McCallum found, that the 40 year old grabbed Lisa Harnum by the throat in a possessive rage as she tried to flee their 15th floor cheap oakleys apartment at The Hyde on July 30, 2011, and dragged her back inside. Neighbours say they heard a woman screaming "Please help me! God, help me!", followed by a man's voice, and then complete silence.

Gittany had knocked the young woman out, Justice McCallum found. He then carried her prone body out to the balcony and "unloaded" her over the edge, sending her plunging 15 storeys to the footpath below.

The killer: Simon buy replica oakley sunglasses Gittany. Photo: James Brickwood

This was Ms Harnum's punishment for making one final, desperate attempt to leave her controlling, dominating boyfriend.

For weeks she had been planning to go leaving bags of clothes with her personal trainer and a counsellor so that Gittany's suspicions would not be aroused, and discussing one way flights back to Canada with her mother. When Gittany discovered the plan he was consumed by rage.

''For all his vigilance, his errant fiancee had found a way to secretly remove her belongings,'' Justice McCallum said.

In fake oakley sunglasses happier times: Gittany proposes to Lisa Harnum. Photo: Supplied

Virtually from the start of his relationship with Ms Harnum, Gittany exhibited a burning need to control virtually every aspect of her life how she dressed, where she went and how she behaved.

In this respect, it was a classic domestic violence scenario, cheap replica oakleys with the dominant male trying to force his partner to bend to his will. ''There can be no doubt the accused was controlling, dominating and at times abusive of Ms Harnum,'' Justice McCallum said.

''The force of his jealous and controlling personality met mixed reaction from Ms Harnum, who was at times defiant and at times submissive to an inexplicable degree. By the end of July 2011, these tensions had reached a point of crisis.''

When police arrived at the murder scene on the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth streets they found a torn up note in the woman's jeans pocket with the words "there are surveillance cameras inside and outside the house" scrawled in her distinctive handwriting.

This was a reference to the near constant surveillance Gittany kept his girlfriend under, including monitoring her text messages through a program he replica oakleys had secretly installed on her phone and a bristle of CCTV cameras monitoring the apartment.

The surveillance devices, a method of control that police are seeing more frequently in domestic violence cases, allowed Gittany to easily uncover his buy fake oakley sunglasses fiancee's plans to flee as well as virtually very other aspect of her life.

There was a certain symbolism in the fact that, the day before replica cheap oakleys the verdict, domestic violence campaigners, police and politicians had sought to raise awareness about violence against women through White Ribbon Day.

As Justice McCallum painstakingly outlined her reasons for finding Gittany guilty, the investigating police sitting in the packed public gallery wore white ribbons. So too did Ms Harnum's mother, Joan."We will always mourn the loss of our beautiful Lisa Cecilia and are working towards making her legacy a powerful wake up call to young women,'' she said.

White Ribbon Day chief executive Libby Davies said that the Gittany case illustrated the "controlling, abusive, abhorrent behaviour of some men that impacts the lives of so many women in Australia, where at least one woman a week dies as a result of domestic violence".

Domestic Violence NSW's Tracy Howe said it illustrated that non physical abuse "could lead to the most ultimate of results which is death".

But this was the last thing on the minds of Gittany's relatives and his new girlfriend, Rachelle Louise, when he was finally convicted. "You're frigg'n wrong!" Ms Louise screamed at Justice McCallum before storming from the court in tears and straight into the waiting media pack.

His mother and sisters could be heard wailing in grief in the one of the court's backrooms, with the former requiring treatment for shock. Other people in the gallery, though, were less surprised by the decision.

By the time Gittany was sent down, it had begun to emerge that his criminal record was less than spotless.

In 1995 Gittany was sentenced to 2 years' periodic detention after he bit the ear of a senior detective who was trying to arrest him about stolen goods.

The then 22 year old had been caught at the back of a Parramatta pub with a number of stolen items in his car, including video recorders, a car stereo and a bikini.

Months later, when officers replica oakley sunglasses came to arrest Gittany, he partly severed the ear of Detective Senior Constable Keith Bristow with his teeth.