A Melbourne truck driver who set fire to a love rival's flat as payback ended up killing the man and the "love of his life" he was trying to protect.
David John Campbell, 45, says he believed nobody was in the Deer Park flat when he torched it between midnight and 1am on September 20 in 2013.
A friend had told him earlier she had seen his rival, Steven White, 44, passed out on a bench, and Campbell believed the woman they were fighting over, Genine Ballantine, had left, a court has heard.
Ms Ballantine and Mr White, both aged 44, were found dead inside the Department of Human Services flat with their pet Jack Russell after emergency crews were called to the scene.
Campbell, of Tullamarine, has pleaded guilty to two counts of arson causing death.
At a plea hearing in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday, Crown Prosecutor Anne Hassan said Campbell had set the flat on fire as "payback" to Mr White.
He and Ms Ballantine had been in a turbulent, 20-year relationship until she left him in January 2013 and started living with Mr White.
She left Mr White and moved back with Campbell in August 2013, but in September 2013 was living with Mr White again.
Campbell believed Mr White was beating Ms Ballantine and thought that if he burnt down Mr White's flat she would not be able to go back to him.
Campbell's defence barrister said he had been drinking and taking ice before he committed the crime.
Afterwards, he called a friend and said "I torched that place," Ms Hassan said.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Mr White's mother Brenda McIntyre said she can't stop thinking of her son's last moments.
"All I want to do is sleep so I can see him in my dreams," Mrs McIntyre said in her statement read in court.
Ms Hassan said there had been 11 intervention orders taken out against Campbell during his time with Ms Ballantine.
"This was the last act in a relationship of domestic violence," she said.
"He has repeatedly interfered with Ms Ballantine's attempts to have an autonomous life."
Campbell's barrister said the relationship between Campbell and Ms Ballantine was characterised by turmoil, but not violence.
Campbell will be sentenced on April 24.
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