Lionel Patea and Tara Brown. He has pleaded guilty to her murder.

Tara Brown was young, beautiful, popular and a devoted mother.

Lionel Patea was her partner of four years, the father of the three-year-old daughter she doted on.

He was also an ex-Bandido, a one-time sergeant-at-arms with a violent criminal past.

It was a propensity for violence that would claim his estranged girlfriend’s life in the most horrific of ways.

On Monday, in the Brisbane Supreme Court, the 25-year-old New Zealander was sentenced to life in jail after pleading guilty to her murder.

Tara Brown doted on her daughter Aria, describing her as “my world”. Photo: InstagramSource:Supplied

On an otherwise unremarkable sunny Gold Coast Tuesday morning in September 2014, Tara Brown dropped the couple’s daughter, Aria, at a daycare centre.

It was the last time the smiling little girl she described as “my world” would kiss her mum goodbye.

Unbeknown to the 24-year-old, Patea was there waiting for her that morning.

He had called the childcare centre an hour earlier to make sure Aria was booked in that day.

Tara Brown and Lionel Patea in happier times. Photo: InstagramSource:Supplied

Tara had tried to leave him before but he had not allowed it.

He emptied her bank account, monitored her phone and prevented her leaving their house.

The young New Zealander’s mother, Natalie Hinton, said her daughter was living in fear.

“The monster controlled her,” she told the Supreme Court on Monday, after Patea finally entered his guilty plea.

In her final days, however, Tara had succeeded in breaking free.

She had gone into hiding, helped by friends and domestic violence services, as she began to establish a new life for herself and Aria, a life in which she hoped to study law.

The day before the fatal confrontation, Patea’s lawyers had been served with interim custody papers.

Patea apparently had no intention of letting his daughter go, or, at least, planned to punish her mother for leaving.

On the morning of September 8, 2015, just before 9am, he confronted Tara in the car park of Aria’s childcare centre.

The young New Zealander was planning a new life after leaving Patea. Photo: InstagramSource:Supplied

She fled to the perceived safety of her black Mazda 2 but, ultimately, it was no match for Patea’s Jeep four wheel drive.

She sped away, Patea in hot pursuit.

The estranged couple reached speeds of more than 100km/hr, as the young mother desperately tried to escape.

At a set of traffic lights on a busy road in Nerang, witnesses saw Patea using both fists to bash on the driver’s side window of Tara’s car.

The terrified young woman zoomed off and made a frantic emergency call while driving.

“Help me, help me, help me,” she screamed at the operator, only able to give Molendinar, a quiet inland Gold Coast suburb, as her location.

The helpless operator was soon to hear Tara die.

A CCTV camera captured the moment Tara Brown's car crashed of the road in Molendinar on September 8, 2015.Source:Supplied

It was at a residential intersection where Patea finally ran her off the road.

CCTV footage from a nearby home captured her small car careering at speed down an embankment and into a backyard, his Jeep then coming to a stop nearby.

The camera captured Patea as he got out of his car and ran towards the wreckage, where the mother of his child lay trapped in her overturned vehicle.

But he was not there to help her.

Patea picked up a 7.8kg metal fire hydrant cover that he passed by.

“Lionel, stop, please help me,” the young mother screamed, before the emergency call captured the murderous horror that unfolded in the backyard of the Macquarie Avenue home.

As Tara lay, unable to escape, he inflicted 29 savage blows upon her head, the sickening thuds captured in the continuing emergency call she had made just moments before.

Neighbours who heard the crash and came running to the scene.

One, mistakenly believing Patea was trying to help her, smashed the car window, which unwittingly aided the ex-bikie’s frenzied attack.

Others tried to intervene but there was no stopping the rage-fuelled bashing.

Lisa Kennedy told the court in a victim impact statement on Monday she remained haunted by Tara’s bashing, which she said, “horrified me to my core”.

“She was screaming at me to help her from you,” she said.

“Did I do my best, did I try hard enough?

“I felt like I had failed Tara.”

The tape recorded Tara as she kicked and screamed for help through blow after brutal blow.

After the 27th thud she fell silent.

Tara Brown’s mother said her daughter’s fractured face made her a “shadow of her beauty”. Photo: InstagramSource:Supplied

Patea’s murderous work was done. Tara Brown was brain dead.

With the fatal blow delivered, Patea fled the scene, stealing a Gold Coast City Council ute parked nearby to make his escape.

About an hour later, he surrendered himself to Coomera Police Station with self-inflicted stab wounds.

Patea’s Jeep, which he used to run Tara Brown off the road. Molendinar. Photo: Jessica HuxleySource:Gold Coast Bulletin

He was taken to the Gold Coast University Hospital, where, in a nearby ward, Tara lay unconscious.

Publicly, police said her condition was critical.

Privately, they knew she was already gone.

Her head injuries and facial fractures were so severe, there was no possible way she could ever have survived them.

The doctors kept her on life support so her family could say their final goodbyes.

Tara’s distraught family flew in from New Zealand.

Ms Hinton described her pain at seeing her daughter in her hospital bed, with multiple fractures disfiguring her beautiful face.

Tara Brown was a devoted mother. Photo: InstagramSource:Supplied

She was “broken”, Ms Hinton said, “a shadow of her beauty”.

On Wednesday night, the family turned Tara’s life support machine off and she slipped away.

Lionel Patea remained in a bed in the same hospital, under police guard, charged with attempted murder, along with domestic violence and driving offences.

He had admitted to hospital staff he, “did something bad to her”.

The attempted murder charge was upgraded to murder at his first court appearance, in Southport Magistrates Court a week later.

Then 24, Patea could only mournfully nod his head when the magistrate asked him if he understood the charge was now murder.

His markedly forlorn figure came in stark contrast to the frenzied, enraged man who neighbours were powerless to stop in the Molendinar backyard.

Tara Brown. Photo: InstagramSource:Supplied

Patea has remained in custody in the 18 months since, but it was not until Monday morning, just as his murder trial was about to begin, that he finally pleaded guilty to killing Tara.

He could not look at the young woman’s mother as she read her victim impact statement and talked about how the now four-year-old Aria continued to ask about her mum.

Outside court, Patea’s lawyer, Campbell McCallum, read a statement on behalf of his client, in which he said he knew he would never be forgiven.

He acknowledged the “enormous pain” he had caused Tara’s family and said his “main focus” was his daughter Aria, the little girl whose mother he had so savagely murdered.

“I do not wish to cause Tara’s family any further pain nor delay their need for justice, I accept without reservation the punishment imposed upon me by the justice system today,” Patea’s statement said.

“I know Tara will never be forgotten, nor will I ever be forgiven.

“I just hope that I can today stop any further potential pain or suffering for Tara’s family and I

I now live only for my daughter Aria.”

Lionel Patea pleaded guilty to killing her mother, but said his daughter Aria is now the only reason he lives. Photo: FacebookSource:Supplied

In sentencing Patea to life in jail, with a non-parole period of 20 years on Monday, Justice Debra Mullins sought to remind him that it was Aria who would also continually serve as a reminder of what he had done.

“You have to live every day of your life knowing that you deprived Ms Brown of her life and your daughter of her mother,” she said.

Patea will be eligible for parole at the age of 44, in 2035.

Anyone in need of assistance is urged to contact the national domestic violence helpline on 1800 737 732 or 1800 RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.

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