The families of the two murder victims of Christopher Little took some comfort in knowing he will be spending most of the rest of his life in prison.

"We can just move on with the comfort and the peace knowing that the person responsible will be behind bars ...," Jill Crocker, sister of murder victim Julie Crocker, told reporters outside court on Friday.

"I want him to be in jail forever. He killed my innocent girl," said Monica Menendez, mother of murder victim Paula Menendez. "She didn't do nothing. Nothing."

Justice Michelle Fuerst gave Little, a fiberglass salesman, a tonguelashing as she imposed the mandatory first-degree murder sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years.

She called it a cowardly vicious crime.

"You slashed the throat of the woman you professed to love so severely that her head almost came off," she told the 38-year-old Markham resident about the wounds he inflicted on his estranged wife Julie Crocker.

"You forever deprived your daughters of their mother's love," Feurst added.

Little's defence was that Paula Menendez -- separated from sportscaster Rick Ralph, who was seeing Crocker -- had gone to Crocker's home and murdered her. Little claimed he bumped into Menendez's body, hanging from a rope in his garage, with his car as he entered.

A forensic pathologist testified it didn't appear to him that Menendez had committed suicide.

"She was facing her future with grace and courage," Fuerst said. ""You saw to it that the pain you inflicted increased a thousand-fold when you sought out and publicly labelled her a homicidal, suicidal maniac day after day in this court. Let there be no mistake. Paula Menendez was your victim."

The Crown's theory was that Little killed Crocker after she made it clear their nine-year marriage was indeed over.

He then drove Menendez's Etobicoke home, strangled her, then brought the body back to his home in Markham where he made it appear as if she had killed herself.

"He's a monster," said Stefanie Donovan, one of Crocker's sisters.

The focus now shifts to her nieces, who will have a father in prison and a mother in the grave.

Donovan said they want to make sure they grow to be well-adjusted, happy adults.

Monica Menendez commended the judge for repudiating the attacks on her daughter, and added this: "I feel sorry for him in a way. I feel sorry for his family too. It must be terrible to have a son who is a murder. It must be devastating, I think."

Jaimie Menendez, Paula's father looked over at Little as he read his victim impact statement in court and said, "I do not hate this man."

Defence lawyer John Rosen said his client is disappointed by the verdict and has consistently maintained his innocence.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Jim Junkin