Two men murdered an autistic teenager with an axe after he tried to protect his beloved stepfather from an ambush at a country Victorian home.
Timothy "Timmy" O'Brien, 14, was very close to his stepfather Peter Williams and they were often found together.
So Timmy went along, with a baseball bat in tow, when Mr Williams was lured to a Scarsdale home under the false belief he needed to investigate a "prowler".
That loyalty cost Timmy his life in January 2013.
Darren Wilson, 37, has been sentenced to 30 years and six months imprisonment for his role in murdering Timmy with an axe.
"Your behaviour was barbaric and causes any right thinking member of our community to recoil in horror at your actions," Justice Betty King told Wilson at his sentence in July.
Co-offender Joel Parker Henderson, 42, will be sentenced by Justice Bernard Bongiorno within a week, for his role in the murder, after appearing in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday.
Wilson was in dispute with Mr Williams, who is his cousin, and recruited Henderson and others to lure Mr Williams to an address to assault him.
Wilson jumped out and punched Mr Williams repeatedly when he arrived with Timmy, so Timmy hit Wilson a number of times with a baseball bat.
Henderson approached with an axe and Timmy struck him as well, before Henderson chased him outside and hit him with the blunt back of the axe.
Wilson then grabbed the axe and struck Timmy's head with its blade, while Henderson stood nearby.
Defence barrister George Georgiou, SC, said Wilson's moral culpability was greater than Henderson's.
But Crown prosecutor Christopher Dane, QC, said splitting responsibility for the crime was "an attempt to divide the angels on the head of a pin".
"This is a circumstance where two men have taken an axe to a boy," he said.
Mr Georgiou also told the court Henderson's acquired brain injury meant he was not able to think clearly and exercise appropriate judgement.
Both Justice King and Justice Bongiorno accepted the murder was not premeditated.
Henderson has served 1,035 days in pre-sentence custody, where he is in protection.
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