Court documents reveal the man accused of raping and murdering Melbourne woman Jill Meagher blamed an argument with his girlfriend for his anger and aggression on the night she was killed.

Adrian Ernest Bayley, 41, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to raping Ms Meagher, but not guilty to two other counts of rape and one charge of murder.

Bayley is accused of dragging the ABC employee into a laneway off Hope Street in Brunswick in Melbourne and raping and strangling her.

Photos released by the court have given a chilling new glimpse of the final moments of Ms Meagher.

A police summary tendered to the Melbourne Magistrates Court says Bayley had an argument with his girlfriend about his "ongoing jealousy and possessiveness" at the Lounge Bar in Swanston Street on the night of September 21.

The court heard Ms Meagher was snatched from the street just eight minutes after she left a Sydney Road bar where she had been socialising with colleagues.

The police summary says Bayley saw Ms Meagher walking down the road and ran to catch up with her.

"I was just walking ahead of her and we'd already interacted on Sydney Road, and that's when she rang her brother. She was actually telling me about her father," Bayley later told police.

He told police Ms Meagher looked distraught and like she was lost.

"You know it wasn't really my intention to hurt her," he told detectives.

"I spoke to her, you know and said, look... I'll help you.

"She flipped me off and that made me angry, because I was actually trying to do a nice thing... and I didn't take well to her response."

'What have I done?'

Adrian Bayley will fight accusations of murder. ( Facebook )

Prosecutors say Bayley accosted Ms Meagher at 1:38am and dragged her into the laneway, one minute after her husband sent her a text message asking if she was OK.

"I actually apologised... I can't imagine how - how she felt, but I know how I felt. It's not nice, man, it's not nice. And all I thought was, 'what have I done?'," Bayley told police.

"I cannot believe that it - it went that way. I swear."

Police say he left her body in the laneway while he went home to get a shovel and his car.

Bayley allegedly returned at 4:22am, put Ms Meagher's body in the boot and drove to Gisborne South to bury her on the side of the road.

"I cried, man, and I dug a hole ... I didn't cry for me," Bayley told detectives.

The court documents reveal Bayley ran out of petrol on the way home and had to wave down a passing motorist who took him to a petrol station to get fuel in a jerry can, and back to his car.

The summary says police used data from Vodafone to track Ms Meagher's mobile phone.

It indicated that her phone was in the Brunswick area until 4:24am, then moved north along CityLink near Moreland Road at 4:40am.

Police say they obtained a list of the cars that passed through the gantry, which led them to Bayley's car and ultimately, to his arrest.

'Death penalty'

Police say he admitted in a 10-hour interview to raping and strangling Ms Meagher, claiming it was because of the argument he had with his girlfriend earlier in the night, and that he had an "angry and aggressive demeanour which he transferred onto the deceased".

"I'm going to jail for a long time... I hope they bring back the death penalty before I get sentenced... I have no life left," he told detectives.

"They should have the death penalty for people like me."

Police say Bayley's girlfriend found a broken sim card that belonged to Ms Meagher's phone when she was washing his clothes.

"[His girlfriend] has hung the clothes on the line and has placed the broken sim card in the clothes basket to ask the accused about it when he returned home," the summary said.

"Before [his girlfriend] had the opportunity to ask the accused about the sim card, the accused was arrested by homicide detectives."

Police found an ABC-marked pencil and two cigarette butts during a search of the laneway.

Her handbag was found the next day.

Bayley has been committed to stand trial in the Victorian Supreme Court.