Man jailed for life over murder of QLD grandmother

A Queensland judge has condemned the "callous wickedness" of a junk mail delivery man who murdered an 85-year-old woman on Macleay Island.

Detectives found grandmother Liselotte Watson dead on the bedroom floor of her Moreton Bay home in November 2012.

The pensioner died from horrific head injuries, which jurors were confronted with when they saw graphic post-mortem photographs early in the trial of Steven Mark John Fennell, 56.

Fennell denied bludgeoning Mrs Watson to death with a hammer to cover up his financial misdeeds.

The Supreme Court jury today rejected Fennell's defence that there was no direct evidence linking him to the crime, reaching a guilty verdict after deliberating for almost two days.

"Mrs Watson had placed her trust in you," Justice Martin Daubney said in sentencing.

"It is bad enough that, as appears to have been the case, you were betraying her trust by using her money to fund your gambling habit, but to have killed her in such a cruel and callous way bespeaks a base wickedness which is fully deserving of the sentence I am about to impose.

"I sentence you to life imprisonment."

Fennell developed a close relationship with Mrs Watson that involved everything from banking to washing her hair after he "inherited" her when he bought a leaflet delivery business.

She was, in his words, a "terribly lonely" woman.

The court heard he made withdrawals from her account to the tune of $24,000 over three months, while being regularly spotted gambling at the TAB.

But those so-called financial misdeeds also proved a point of argument for Fennell's defence team, which questioned what sense there would be in killing the woman who had become his "golden goose".

The prosecution said there were too many coincidences linking Fennell to the crime, including that he borrowed a hammer later found dumped in the ocean off the island.

The father-of-two was "devastated" by the verdict, his lawyer Michael Gatenby said outside court.

"This was a woman who he cared for deeply, and he's very disappointed," he said.

"We'd said everything that possibly could be said on his behalf, and had real hopes the jury would find there was insufficient evidence to convict him."

Fennell maintains his innocence and has signalled he will make an appeal.

He has already served almost three years behind bars.