A warning to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers, this story includes the name and image of a person who has died and contains details some viewers may find distressing. A Queensland judge has found a 44-year-old man guilty of the murder of two-year-old Chinchilla toddler Kaydence Hazel Mills.
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00:0044-year-old Tansel D'Stachi was today found guilty of the murder and torture of two-year-old
00:07toddler Cadence Mills.
00:10It's believed Cadence died sometime in early 2017, but her body wasn't found until 2020
00:15by police officers at the Chinchilla Weir, about 400 kilometres west of Brisbane.
00:21In his ruling handed down today, Justice Sean Cooper found Cadence had been mistreated and
00:26during the trial heard she'd been forced to sleep naked on the toilet floor and was
00:30subject to regular beatings by D'Stachi.
00:33He found it was those beatings that likely caused her death.
00:36He'll be sentenced in the Toowoomba Supreme Court on Thursday.
00:41His co-accused, 32-year-old Zenita Tamee Dewita was acquitted of the murder and torture of
00:46Cadence Mills.
00:47Justice Cooper found the prosecution hadn't proved beyond reasonable doubt she'd intended
00:52to mistreat the toddler.
00:54She was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment after pleading guilty to two counts of interfering
01:00with a corpse.
01:02She'd been due to be released today from the watch house after serving more than 1,600
01:06days in pre-sentence custody, but her lawyers asked the court to delay that release until
01:12Monday to allow her time to arrange for somewhere to live.
01:16Justice Cooper agreed to those requests.