Her mother always knew. From the moment Julie-Anne Hand was told her pregnant daughter's body had been found in the Blue Mountains in January 2006, she was certain her son-in-law was guilty of the murder. She had already suspected that he had tried to poison her daughter, Jody Galante, then 26, but no one had believed her. A devastated Mrs Hand had to spend the next five weeks pretending Mark Galante was innocent - comforting him about losing a wife, publicly supporting him and even holding his hand at Jody's funeral - while police gathered evidence. In April 2008, more than two years after her daughter was last seen, Mrs Hand cried and whispered "yes" in the Supreme Court as Galante was sentenced to 27 years' jail, with a non-parole period of 20 years, for murdering his wife, who was three months pregnant. Galante, 29, wearing the same black suit as when he married Jody, did not react to the sentence. What the Mother Knew is the real story of Jody's murder and subsequent trial, pieced together from police transcripts, interviews with the family and conversations with the killer.
