The jury was unmoved by the defendant's cries and his claim that the young Irish woman had provoked him by attacking him with a knife, reports Deaglán de Bréadún, in London.
There was an element of chance in the fact that Georgina Eager did not make it all the way home to her family at Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow, in the early morning of May 22nd, 2003.
At the last minute, she turned back, persuaded by the silken words of her employer and lover, Christopher Newman, who murdered her in cold blood shortly afterwards.
Despite his plea that the gentle and naive young Wicklow woman had gone for him with a knife as well as insulting his virility and the absurd pseudo-science of "factology" which he promoted, the jury remained impervious and they were equally unmoved by the periodic wails and sobbing that punctuated his evidence from the witness-box.
In a strong statement as he was passing sentence, Judge Jonathan van der Werff said the victim was probably asleep when Newman entered her tiny bedroom at 141 St Peter's Road, Walkinstown, Dublin, that morning.
The nature of her injuries suggests that, if she were asleep, she woke up immediately and struggled with her adversary.
In all, her attacker stabbed her 21 times, not to mention other injuries inflicted. Even when, in the judge's word, Georgina was "moribund", Newman turned her over and stabbed her repeatedly in the back. It was a horrifying murder.
Although the full facts will probably never be known, it appears that things started to go wrong between Georgina and her employer-cum-lover after Easter 2003. Around that time she began to tell friends she was thinking of cutting back on her hours at the clinic and going back to her previous line of work in make-up and grooming.
There was compelling evidence that Newman was jealous and possessive.
Witnesses told of him checking on calls received from men looking for Georgina and he told at least one of her male admirers in abrupt terms to leave her alone.
Despite her high level of education as well as her foreign languages and travel, Georgina was clearly an innocent abroad, full of a praiseworthy desire to help other people but far too trusting for her own good.
Her penchant for engaging in private written dialogue with her "guardian angels" indicates an almost childlike innocence.
This charming and intelligent young person who had so much to look forward to in life was unfortunate to fall in with the likes of Christopher Newman, 34 years her senior, who had set himself up as a health guru with tenuous qualifications.
Georgina had trained in massage and this was part of the range of treatments offered at the clinic. With his penchant for secret videos, Newman taped these massage sessions. The court was shown a video of Georgina massaging the leg of a young male patient on May 9th, 2003. The man was in a state of sexual arousal and had not bothered to cover himself with a towel.
Newman claims he was outraged by what he saw, although he did not intervene there and then. He had previously promised to hand over the clinic to Georgina as he planned to return to India to set up a university. But he testified that this incident changed his mind and he threatened to send the tape to Georgina's mother. He now promised the clinic to another female employee. It emerged that the premises were in fact leased, although it is doubtful that Georgina was aware of this.
The next two weeks - the last in Georgina's life - were very fraught by all accounts.
Things finally came to a head on the night of Wednesday, May 21st, 2003. A public row took place outside the clinic between Newman and Ms Eager.
Witnesses testified they saw them arguing and that there was shouting. In the aftermath of the row, Georgina was clearly upset and even frightened.
She rang her family shortly after midnight and her mother, who "thought she was being attacked", told her to make a run for it. Her father, George Eager, urged her to get a taxi home and he left out some money to pay the fare before he went to bed. The indications are that Georgina, who lived in a small bedsitter beside the clinic, headed for home by car in the early hours of the morning.
Meanwhile Newman had gone to the 78 Club casino on Aungier Street, where he lost €1,900 gambling at roulette.
Video footage from the casino showed Newman gambling with one hand while holding the phone with the other and talking to Georgina. He seems to have persuaded her to return to her tiny flat. She phoned home again and, much calmer now, told the family everything was all right, there had just been some difficulty with a patient. Newman returned to Walkinstown some time between 5am and 9.30am. He was the only surviving witness to what happened next.
He says he went into Georgina's bedroom and took off his clothes, asking her to make love to him one more time before she left. By his account, she told him she had only been having sex with him to get the clinic, that he could not perform sexually even with Viagra and that she had been making love to a younger man all night. He says she also sneered at his self-proclaimed discipline of "factology".
He also claims she threw a hammer at him and came at him with a knife. In the ensuing struggle, he continues, Georgina was hurt. Newman is over 6ft and of strong build, and he must have towered over Georgina who was only 5ft 4in.
It is a matter of dispute as to whether the black-handled stainless steel knife with its serrated 6in blade was taken from the kitchen or was already left beside the bed for the purpose of peeling and cutting fruit. There was a fruit bowl beside the bed but it was apparently being used as an ashtray. Judge van der Werff expressed the view that Newman brought the knife from the kitchen himself.
The evidence suggests that Georgina put up a determined struggle.
When the victim was discovered, she had been stabbed 21 times, as well as suffering other injuries, and was lying face-down on the bed in a pool of blood with the knife sticking out of the back of her neck. The court heard that there were several puncture wounds as though the attacker was seeking the spot he eventually found: a soft place between the base of the skull and top of the spine. Dr Cassidy said this wound suggested considerable anatomical knowledge.
Newman left the flat and drove in the direction of Naas, apparently looking for a place to dump the body. He returned to the flat and, as Georgina lay dead on the bed, he took her car keys and bank cards and then left, locking the door of the flat behind him. He withdrew €1,200 from Georgina's bank account and left for London on a British Midlands flight at 1.15pm that day.
Arriving in London, he headed for the Islington home of his former wife, Mafida Louhichi, who had not seen him for 15 years.
Ms Louhichi, who knew Newman as Palta, said: "I was in total disbelief that it should be Palta. He looked old and frail." He tried to give one of his two sons some money but the boy threw it back at him.
After a few hours he took a taxi to Westminster Bridge and claimed later he was planning to drown himself. On the way he bought a bottle of champagne which he opened in the back of the cab. He asked the driver to go from one end of the bridge to the other three times but made no serious attempt to jump off. A group of police officers arrested him for drunken behaviour.
In an attempt to contact friends or relatives, the police called a number on Newman's mobile phone. It was in fact Georgina's number. The call was answered by members of the Garda, who had just found the victim's body at her flat. The Eager family had become progressively more alarmed during the day and called the Garda who broke into the flat shortly after 10pm.