A parolee who killed a Victorian jewellery shop owner during a robbery has not expressed his remorse for the crime, a judge says.
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth said Gavin Perry has had plenty of opportunity to show remorse after pleading guilty to the July 2013 murder of Dermot O'Toole.
"He could do what a lot of people do and actually express his remorse," she said on Wednesday.
"There are lots of ways for him to show genuine remorse."
The court was told that Perry had insisted he was innocent in phone calls to his girlfriend late last year.
Perry told the woman that police had nothing on him and could not even place him at the scene, prosecutor Mark Rochford QC said.
In one call, Perry said he was confident of being released from prison.
"They can't keep me in here forever ... I'm innocent," he said.
In later phone calls, after he had entered a guilty plea, Perry said that "he had to" because there were too many statements against him.
Defence barrister Julian McMahon said the rest of Perry's phone calls showed that he was talking "arrant nonsense" in an effort to keep in touch with someone outside prison.
"He is protesting his innocence to a girl who is his only contact with the outside world," Mr McMahon said.
Mr McMahon said Perry was now isolated and had not received a visitor since October.
Perry, 27, has pleaded guilty to murder, intentionally causing injury and three counts of armed robbery.
He was released from jail in early 2013, after serving four years of a six-year term for armed robbery offences.
While still on parole, Perry committed three armed robberies in six days - the final crime targeting a jewellery shop in Hastings on July 12, 2013.
Perry, who was high on the drug ice and brandishing a knife, burst into the shop and pushed Mr O'Toole's wife Bridget into a cabinet.
He then stabbed Mr O'Toole when the jeweller rushed to protect his wife.
Justice Hollingworth will sentence Perry at a later date.
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