Meagher killer loses bid to cut sentence Adrian Ernest Bayley has lost his bid to reduce his 35-year non-parole period for the rape and murder of Melbourne woman Jill Meagher. Bayley's lawyers conceded he deserved his life-term for killing the 29-year-old ABC employee in Brunswick last September, but tried to argue the minimum sentence was excessive. Victorian Legal Aid barrister Saul Holt SC told the Victorian Court of Appeal that an appropriate non-parole period would have been between 28 and 32 years. Mr Holt said it was not open for Victorian Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Nettle to conclude that Bayley took pleasure in killing Ms Meagher - a factor that he said added a significant length of time to the minimum term. Justice Nettle said Bayley had strangled Ms Meagher either because she had threatened to go to police or for his own perverted pleasure. Crown Prosecutor Gavin Silbert SC said Mr Holt was splitting hairs. "Effectively, the crown says that the sentence brought down by his honour is unimpeachable," he said. Mr Holt said the judge had erred by taking community protection into account when setting both the maximum and non-parole terms. However, Mr Silbert said the court was obliged to make community protection a major consideration when setting non-parole periods for serious offences. Mr Holt said Justice Nettle had set a similar term to those given to gangland killer Carl Williams and bikie Christopher Wayne Hudson, who shot two men, one of them fatally, in Melbourne's CBD. He said that although Bayley's offending was awful and extreme, Hudson and Williams had more severe aggravating factors in their cases. Chief Justice Marilyn Warren, Justice Paul Coghlan and Justice Marcia Neave took less than 10 minutes to dismiss the appeal application. Bayley, who did not appear in court on Thursday, will be 76 years old before he is eligible for parole. In sentencing Bayley in June this year, Justice Nettle said the murder ranked among the worst committed in Victoria. "The rape was savage and degrading," he said. Your killing of the deceased ranks among the worst kind conceivable. Justice Nettle said Bayley's crime was made even worse because he tried to hide Ms Meagher's body and because he was on parole for other rapes when he committed the offence. "The nature and gravity of your offending and your antecedents are such that nothing short of life imprisonment will suffice," he said. Justice Nettle said he would have jailed Bayley for life with no chance of parole if he hadn't pleaded guilty.