SA man's murderer was a wedding guest

A tearful widow has recalled being visited by a wedding guest days before he murdered her new husband outside their Adelaide home.

"You shook my hand and smiled at me - that very hand slaughtered my husband a few days later," Dounia Asrawe told Phi Ngoc Phu Le in the South Australian Supreme Court.

Ms Asrawe spoke of the pain of being at the funeral home and seeing her husband's body in the tailored suit he wore weeks earlier at their wedding.

Le, 26, has pleaded guilty to murdering the 33-year-old debt collector, who sustained 24 wounds inflicted with a machete and filleting knife when he was ambushed outside his home early on August 9 last year.

Prosecutor Corinna Baohm said Le owed Mr Asrawe $30,000 and a few days before the murder went to his home and paid $2,000.

In her victim impact statement, Ms Asrawe said all her prayers were answered when she married the "amazing person" who had been her best friend since childhood.

"You came to our wedding to celebrate the biggest event of our life," she told Le.

But she was only a wife for 46 days and on the 47th day "I was granted a new title - wife of murder victim Amin Asrawe".

She hoped Le would live a long life, haunted by his crime, and driven into a "state of insanity".

Angela Asrawe said her older brother had become her inspiration after the deaths of their father and brother 11 years ago.

"His love for our mother was second to none and he would do whatever he could to put a smile on her face," she said.

His mother, Amina, said her "angel" had held the family together.

Every morning she lit a candle in his memory and every night she kissed his photo, instead of him.

Le's barrister, Marie Shaw QC, said Mr Asrawe had owed Le money for drugs and his plan had been to rob him, not kill him.

But Ms Baohm said the evidence pointed to pre-meditated murder, saying this was the first time a robbery-gone-wrong had been suggested.

The hearing was adjourned to December 10.