Troy Jason Ruttley faces a maximum of life behind bars for the August 9, 2015, murder of the mother and grandmother whose body has never been found, despite extensive searches by police.

On Monday, dozens of family members of Ms Morgan, including her children, as well as Ruttley’s family packed the public gallery in the NSW Supreme Court in Tamworth for sentencing submissions.

Ruttley, dressed in prison greens in the dock smiled at family but maintains his innocence, despite a jury finding him guilty in July.

“Mr Ruttley maintains his innocence,” defence barrister Anita Betts told the court.

“He says he didn’t kill Johann Morgan and he says he didn’t dispose of her body.”

Crown prosecutor Bryan Rowe said the murder was aggravated because Ruttley killed Ms Morgan inside her Cole Rd house, and the killing was at the upper-middle-range level of offending.

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Seven victim impact statements were tendered to the court from Ms Morgan’s family including her distraught siblings and children.

Mr Rowe tendered Ruttley’s criminal history, which boasts an arson conviction for torching Ms Morgan’s car, breaching an AVO protecting Ms Morgan two years before the murder, as well as an assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

“There isn’t a finding of genuine remorse,” he told the court.

Ms Betts said a recording of an argument between the pair showed Ms Morgan was “angry and abusive” and “there is some provocation, on the basis that that argument preceded, on the Crown’s case, the event”.

Ms Betts said “this matter doesn’t fall within that category of a life sentence”, there was no evidence of a weapon, he had good prospects of rehabilitation and was learning to read and write in jail.

She said her client had a diagnosis of executive dysfunction, was drinking on the night of the murder, and said it was “spontaneous”, and “wasn’t part of a planned or organised criminal activity”.

“[His family] they see him on a regular basis in jail,” she said of his family.

“He is doing what he can do to assist himself.”

More than 40 witnesses were called by the Crown in the seven-day trial including Ms Morgan's children, brothers and sisters, Ruttley's children, extended family members as well as the last people who saw Ms Morgan alive.

The jury found Ruttley killed her and then dragged her body outside of the Cole Rd home and used his Mitsubishi Magna to dispose of the body which has never been found.

Ruttley admits that he torched the car on August 10 at a quarry on the Oxley Highway, 17km outside of Tamworth. 

He maintained he burnt the car because it was playing up, but it was the Crown’s case that Ruttley torched the car to destroy evidence linking him to the murder. 

Ruttley has been in custody since he was arrested by Tamworth detectives in Dubbo in December, 2015.

Justice Anthony Payne will hand down his sentence at 10am.