Rodney Wayne Williams was convicted of killing 16-year-old Tiffany Taylor when she was pregnant for the second time in two years.
And Williams, 68, has a history of murder.
Seven years ago, Tiffany was last seen leaving a hotel south of Brisbane after Williams set up a meeting with her and paid for sex on a dating website.
In July 2015, Williams allegedly picked Tiffany up near the Waterford West hotel and killed her in a distant industrial area before disposing of her corpse in Fernvale, 100 kilometers to the southwest of Logan.
Her remains have never been located.
After almost five hours of deliberation during the three-week trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict for Williams on Monday afternoon.
After a 19-day trial in March 2020, he had also been found guilty of Tiffany’s murder and given a life sentence.
However, Williams was given a new trial after winning an appeal in June 2021.
Williams had previously received a murder conviction in 1978.
He was given a life sentence after stabbing an elderly neighbor in the back during a robbery, but was freed on parole after serving 15 years.
The court heard during the retrial last month that Williams’ Hyundai vehicle contained Tiffany’s blood and DNA.
Williams provided police with information. Tiffany was bleeding from the nose as he scooped her up.
Initially, he said he had driven her to Redbank Plains, but then amended his account to say that he had let her off at a truck stop on the Warrego Highway west of Brisbane and had not seen her since.
He told police that he informed Tiffany he didn’t have any money, but she persisted on seeing him nonetheless because she found him fascinating after reading his dating website profile. He denied having intercourse with the teenager.
Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco said that evidence from highway cameras and phone tracking information from cell towers showed she was in his car on the route to Fernvale.
The court heard that after murdering Tiffany, Williams constructed a fake trail of contact with her on the dating website, leaving her with the message, “Sorry I didn’t show up, decided I wasn’t going to pay for it,” in his last message.
In August 2015, a day before he was scheduled for an interview with police, he was stopped by cops at a railway station in Brisbane with a bag of clothing and treasured things.