In 2020, two teen girls were attacked in their hotel room. Now the offender has been sentenced.

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.

Around 8.40pm, when the girls were getting ready to go swimming in the hotel pool, Kovaleff entered the bathroom and began stabbing the first girl.

The second girl reported hearing Kovaleff laugh and upon her entering the bathroom, she saw him stabbing her friend. He then forced both girls into the bedroom, where he stabbed the first girl again.

He then stabbed the second girl in the stomach. She tried to defend herself and also asked him to call an ambulance. He refused.

After some time, the second girl lost consciousness and later woke up with duct tape and fabric around her stomach wound.

Kovaleff told her: "I'm a monster, I've just killed your best friend...I'm sick in the head."

After the attack, Kovaleff turned on a TV and played jazz music. The judge said the girl who was murdered could have survived if she had received prompt medical treatment. As for the girl who was injured, Kovaleff later told the court he had wanted to sexually assault her, before killing her too.

Kovaleff eventually called for an ambulance, but hung up. He told the operator someone else attacked the "one person dead and another bleeding out inside room 111" when they called back.

Kovaleff also called his dad to tell him what happened. Kovaleff's dad said he should hand himself in.

The injured girl survived and spent eight days in hospital after the attack.

For many months after, Kovaleff feigned mental illness. A forensic psychiatrist said the offender was "not very bright" in his attempt to get a lighter sentence. 

"It was a consensus by that stage that the symptoms he was reporting of psychosis were not real. There's a caveat on everything because he's dishonest," the psychiatrist said. 

He eventually pleaded guilty to murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

At a sentencing hearing at the NSW Supreme Court this week, a now 21-year-old Kovaleff was sentenced to 34 years for murder, with a non-parole period of 24 years. The wounding charge resulted in an additional two years he will spend in prison.

That means he will spend at least 26 years behind bars. 

21-year-old Kristian Kovaleff, pleaded guilty to murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

He has been sentenced to a minimum of 26-years' jail despite his claim, blaming mental illness. #9News https://t.co/dg2VwhHDox

— 9News Sydney (@9NewsSyd) March 30, 2023

"I do not accept, even to the lowest standard, balance of probability, the expression of remorse for his conduct," the judge said, as per AAP. 

The judge described the impact of the murder as "indescribably horrible", saying the family's loss is palpable, along with the emotional trauma for the injured girl who survived.

The murdered girl's sisters told the court of the impact the "heartless" murder has had on their family.

One had to translate for her parents the news delivered by two policemen in the middle of the night that their sister had been killed. The sister said her father sings sad songs and paces around the house crying into the early hours of the morning, while her mother keeps returning to the library where she brought her daughter water as she studied the day before her death.

As the family said in a victim impact statement: "How can we continue to live? Her heartless murder will burn in our minds and soul for the rest of our lives."

Kovaleff is eligible for parole on December 19, 2046.

With AAP.

Feature Image: AAP.