Killer gets life day before Scott birthday

Vincent Stanford has been sentenced to life in prison with no parole for raping and murdering 26-year-old bride-to-be Stephanie Scott at a NSW school in 2015.

The killer was sentenced at Griffith on Thursday, a day before what would have been Ms Scott's 28th birthday.

Stanford, 25, was given the maximum possible sentence for his bloodthirsty April 2015 attack on the 26-year-old, six days before she was due to marry.

Exclamations of "yes" were heard from the Griffith courthouse public gallery when Supreme Court Justice Robert Allan Hulme handed down the life sentence.

"I am satisfied that this is a case of murder that clearly falls within the worst category," he said.

Outside court, Ms Scott's mother Merrilyn said the family would celebrate her daughter's birthday with a cup of tea and a Mint Slice biscuit at 3pm.

"The past 18 months have been the most difficult and harrowing time," she said outside court.

"So much has been taken away from us. Stephanie has had everything taken away from her."

Stanford, a school cleaner, confessed to murdering Ms Scott on Easter Sunday, 2015, at the Leeton High School where they both worked.

He dragged her into a storeroom and attacked her with his fists and a large knife before dumping her body 70km away in the Cocoparra National Park, where he burned it.

During his summary of the case, Justice Hulme also outlined how Stanford had stalked two women and a 12-year-old schoolgirl before he killed Ms Scott.

Police found more than 1800 images of the schoolgirl in Stanford's possession, and surveillance notes in an exercise book that included times she was home alone, the court heard.