Harriet Wran, the daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran, has been sentenced to a minimum of two years in prison over her involvement in the death of Sydney drug dealer Daniel McNulty.
With time already served, she will be eligible for parole in August.
Wran was present when her boyfriend and an acquaintance stabbed the 48-year-old to death in his own home in the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern on July 10, 2014.
The 28-year-old had pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and robbery in company, after the crown dropped a murder charge against her earlier this month.
Wran wiped away tears as Justice Ian Harrison said he accepted that she had “good character” and was genuinely sorry for what had happened that night.
“I accept that Ms Wran has demonstrated genuine remorse,” he said.
“I have no concern that Ms Wran will reoffend.”
Facing a sentencing hearing in the NSW Supreme Court on July 14, the 28-year-old said she will forever regret her involvement in McNulty’s death.
“I feel terrible,” she told the court, according to The Daily Telegraph.
“I am ashamed to have been involved in anything like that. I can’t believe someone died. I can’t believe someone was so badly hurt. No one should lose their life in those circumstances. But it happened and I have to come to terms with that it did.
“I regret every step I took that night.”
Read: ‘Life gave Harriet Wran every advantage, so how did she fall so far?’
It was just four months after the death of her politician father, when Wran, already high on ice, knocked on the door of that housing commission flat in Redfern with one thing on her mind: getting her next hit.
McNulty, peering at her through the window, encouraged his flatmate Brett Fitzgerald to let her in. The door swung open and Wran’s boyfriend, Michael Lee, and his acquaintance, Lloyd Haines, burst past her into the living room.
With only $70 to spend, their plan had been to intimidate McNulty into giving them more drugs. But things quickly turned deadly.
Murdered drug dealer, Daniel McNulty. Image: Facebook.
Lee, armed with a knife, and Haines, masked with a balaclava, ended up in a tousle with McNulty in the bedroom that ended with the drug dealer being stabbed in the back.
The knife had penetrated his chest and punctured his lung, a wound that would prove fatal.
Wran, who was already high on ice at the time, was waiting in the living room when the stabbing occurred.
The Supreme Court heard the Crown accepted Wran was not involved in the attack on McNulty, nor aware that her companions were carrying a knife and balaclava. However, they determined that she "maintained and harboured Lee, believing him to be involved in the stabbing, first at the house of her friend Hobbs, and thereafter remained in his company in private and public..."
Lee and Haines have both pleaded guilty to murder.
At the July 14 hearing, Wran described how she descended from recreational drug user to full-blown addict after meeting an ice user while in a rehabilitation clinic for her bulimia, reports news.com.au.
“I was never going to do ice, it was in another league of drugs," she said. "When you see the billboards of people whose faces are rotting away from using it, that’s how I felt about using it.”
She admitted to previously abusing cocaine, ecstasy and Ritalin, but said once she had a hit of ice there was no going back.
“I never felt like I did [like] when I was using ice. I felt so different, more confident… there was a chemical high I didn’t know existed and I knew my brain was never going to forget that.
“Once the craving starts you can’t stop it … I cried all the way around to the dealer’s place.”