One of Anita Cobby's murderers died in jail on Thursday night.

Michael Murphy was one of the five men who were found guilty for raping and killing the 26-year-old nurse and beauty pageant winner in Prospect, NSW in 1986.

Upon hearing the news, Cobby's widower John said, "I hope it was painful for him. One down, four to go."

John Cobby first met Anita Lorraine Lynch at Sydney Hospital in 1980, when they were both studying nursing.

John was immediately smitten with the then 20-year-old woman. 

"God she was beautiful, and I thought far too good for me," John told Mark Morri in the book Remembering Anita Cobby: The Case, The Husband, The Aftermath – 30 Years On.

"I was thinking to myself, 'She will never go out with me.'"

To his surprise, Anita was similarly interested in him. The two went on to have their first date in a Lebanese restaurant in Surry Hills, where they would soon become regulars.

John and Anita got married in March 1982. A few years later, John won $10,000 at the horse races and followed Anita’s dream to travel to the US, having the trip of their lives.

However, when they returned home in 1985, things started to get rocky. The pair found that they were at different stages of their lives and wanted different things. The two decided to take a break, leaving their rented apartment in Rockdale to move back to their families' homes.

On Sunday, February 2, 1986 Anita informed her mother that she was having dinner with some work friends. She also rejected John’s invitation to see him that night due to her plans that evening. After dinner, Anita was dropped off at Central Station, where she took the train back home to Blacktown.

On February 4, 1986, John went home from his shift at the hospital feeling slightly anxious, as his wife had missed work the day before. Then the news came on the car radio, announcing the ominous: "The naked body of a young woman has been found in a paddock at Prospect in western Sydney."

He found an emergency phone and called Anita's parents' house. He did not know whom he got connected to; all he could remember was hearing, "You've got to get back here, John", before returning to his car and speeding towards Blacktown.

It turned out that on the night of the dinner, Anita had been walking home from the Blacktown train station when five men dragged her into a stolen car and took her to Prospect, where they raped and slit her throat.

Before the discovery, John had risen up as the prime suspect. The investigators went from asking thorny questions to making relentless accusations. At one point, John finally relented, "Yep, I did. Must have."

However, despite the confession, some officers believed that it was an act of random violence. The investigation finally reached the five men, who were then convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 in what the media called "the trial of the century".

John remained haunted even after the sentencing. "My life, my family's life and Anita's family will suffer for the rest of our lives,” Cobby told The Daily Telegraph in 2016. 

"I blamed myself for her dying and still do. I should have been with her," a despaired John admitted. 

He changed his name to John Francis and gave only one interview in 1987 before disappearing from the public's eye. He left Australia to work in England but then returned to Australia and changed his name back to Cobby in 2016.

Do you remember the Anita Cobby murder case in the 1980s? Tell us in the comments below.