Nine-year-old Ebony Simpson was abducted after getting off her bus on the way home from school on August 19, 1992.

Locals and emergency services joined in an intensive search for the missing youngster before Ebony's mother Christine Simpson's worst fears were realised. The defenceless schoolgirl had been bundled into the boot of a waiting Mazda 808 sedan and driven to a nearby dam.

Her hands and feet bound with speaker wire, she was sexually assaulted by Andrew Peter Garforth. He then threw her into the dam, still bound, and listened to her scream as she drowned.

Then he stuffed her schoolbag with rocks and threw it into the dam. He then left.

Ebony, an accomplished swimmer, had no chance of reaching the shore.

The following day Garforth joined about 150 locals who were assisting police in the search for the missing schoolgirl. That night he was interviewed and stunned police with his casual manner and graphic description of events.

Justice Newman, the Supreme Court judge who presided over Garforth's trial, said Ebony's last moments must have been spent in abject fear.

It was a 'worst category case' - for only the fifth time in NSW, to which Garforth simply had no defence or explanation. Twenty nine-year-old Garforth was sentenced to jail for the term of his natural life.

Justice Newman described him as heartless.

"Again, as I noted earlier, his callous and casual comment as to what he would have expected to happen to his victim as she struggled in the water is chilling to the extreme," Justice Newman said.

Garforth had been charged with 76 offences and convicted on 41 occasions. He and his family had been relocated from Western Australia to Picton and St Vincent de Paul moved them from Picton to Bargo. He had lived just 3km from Ebony's home for just five weeks and had stalked her. Her future was wiped out in 25 minutes.

On December 7, 1994, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions wrote to Christine Simpson to formally advise her the High Court had refused Garforth special leave to appeal against his sentence of life imprisonment.

"There is no other avenue of appeal available to the prisoner," the DPP said.

"The sentence requires that he be imprisoned for the term of his natural life."