Mum of slain teen lives with 'gaping hole' in her heart

Family of Michelle Bright have confronted her killer in court before he's sentenced. (PR HANDOUT IMAGE PHOTO)

After her teenage daughter was murdered on the way home from a birthday party, Loraine Bright felt haunted in her quiet country town.

Her 17-year-old daughter Michelle Bright was killed in the early hours of February 27, 1999, while walking home from the party in Gulgong, in central west NSW.

The teenager's body was found three days later hidden in long grass by the side of Barneys Reef Road, the rural street where her family lived.

Mrs Bright told the NSW Supreme Court she had to leave Gulgong exactly a year after her daughter's murder because the constant reminders were too much to bear.

"It was too painful to keep driving past the place that Michelle had lain for three days after she was so cruelly murdered," she told the court in Dubbo on Friday, her voice cracking with emotion.

"It was too hard to see different men pass our local RSL where I worked, wondering and worrying to myself: 'Was it you?'."

After more than 24 years of anguish, Ms Bright's family will finally see her murderer Craig Henry Rumsby brought to justice when he is sentenced on Monday morning.

In June, a jury found the 56-year-old guilty of Ms Bright's murder and of a terrifying attempted rape of another young woman on January 1, 1998.

Mrs Bright said her daughter was a loving and caring girl, who had dreams of working with animals and wanted to have six children of her own.

"Losing Michelle in the way we did has left a gaping hole in my heart."

After Rumsby 's arrest in 2020, Mrs Bright said she was overwhelmed to return to Gulgong to find it adorned with purple and yellow streamers in her daughter's honour.

"It has touched the whole community of Gulgong and Mudgee, they have never forgotten her."

Ms Bright's father and brothers told of the horror of living through two decades wondering what happened to her.

The woman who was attacked by Rumsby as she stood outside her home on the morning of New Year's Day said she lived in terror for years.

"I couldn't stop the flashbacks of his dirty face, his black teeth and him choking me, even to this day," she said in a victim impact statement, read by crown prosecutor Lee Carr SC.

The woman reported the attack and police spoke to Rumsby, but she did not complete a statement in fear she would not be believed

"As a result I kept this attack secret for 24 years," she said.

Mr Carr said Rumsby intended to kill Ms Bright, having made alleged admissions of covering her mouth for 10 minutes.

"A 17-year-old girl is entitled to walk home ... safely and not subjected to this kind of behaviour."

The court heard Rumsby's violence was sexually motivated and that he had continued similar behaviour as recently as 2019, when he performed a sex act in a Sydney suburban park.

Court documents showed he was also convicted of assaulting young women in 2013 and 2019, including groping a retail worker, and forcibly kissing and harassing a woman he approached on a train. 

Defence barrister Nicholas Broadbent said Rumsby's crimes were "very grave", though he had a history of low intellectual functioning.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

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