The relationship between Huajiao Zhuang and her daughter-in-law started to fall apart about a month after her grandson was born.
Zhuang had come from a very traditional part of rural China and expected Dan "Selina" Lin to call her "mother" and be deferential. She also expected to live with her son and daughter-in-law in Melbourne.
Ms Lin, however, came to Australia on her own as a teenager and was less traditional in her ways. She wanted to enjoy married life with some independence from her in-laws.
It set in train a series of events that led to Zhuang bludgeoning Ms Lin to death with a hammer, for which the 50-year-old Reservoir grandmother will spend 18 years in jail.
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kaye said Zhuang argued with 21-year-old Ms Lin just before the fatal attack, as Ms Lin was about to bathe her young son Alfred in the family home at Bundoora on May 3, 2012.
"In the course of that argument, you took hold of a hammer and struck Selina's face and head more than 30 blows with it," Justice Kaye said on Wednesday.
"You also inflicted a number of blows to her arms and hands while she was trying to defend herself."
Immediately after the murder, Zhuang left her grandson alone as she placed Ms Lin's body in a nylon suitcase and put it in a neighbour's wheelie bin.
In the early hours of the next morning, Zhuang pushed the wheelie bin 800 metres down the road to a nearby creek. She tipped the bag down a steep bank into the creek and hid the bin.
Justice Kaye said later that morning, Zhuang told her daughter that she had to defend herself from Ms Lin, then reported it to the police, claiming self-defence.
But Justice Kaye said the argument was over the way Ms Lin intended to bathe her son.
"There is evidence that Selina tended to be quite possessive of Alfred, particularly when she sensed you were seeking to interfere with her care for him," he said.
"However, on each previous occasion, Selina had not resorted to any form of violence, or threat of violence, towards you.
"Rather, I am satisfied that because of the argument ... your underlying feelings of hostility and enmity towards Selina boiled over so much so that you erupted in an uncontrolled fit of violent rage towards her.
"The nature of the injuries which you inflicted on Selina, the number of defensive injuries which she sustained, and the lack of any injury to yourself, satisfy me beyond reasonable doubt that throughout the incident you were the aggressor."
Zhuang will spend at least 13-and-a-half years in jail for the murder.
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