Murderer and convicted heroin trafficker Petrit Lekaj will serve at least 20 years in jail for stabbing his 20-year-old daughter eight times in an unprovoked fit of rage.

Key points: Petrit Lekaj pleaded guilty last year to murdering his daughter Sabrina

Petrit Lekaj pleaded guilty last year to murdering his daughter Sabrina The 20-year-old's body was found inside her car in Adelaide's west in July 2019

The 20-year-old's body was found inside her car in Adelaide's west in July 2019 He will spend at least 20 years behind bars for the murder

Supreme Court Justice Trish Kelly today sentenced the 49-year-old to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 20 years for murdering Sabrina in the western Adelaide suburb of Kidman Park last July.

The court heard last Wednesday that Lekaj decided to confront his daughter — a medical radiology student at university — about her partying and recreational drug use, but ended up stabbing her eight times in a fit of rage.

He then drove around at slow speed with her body in the car for almost an hour and a half before being stopped by police.

Justice Kelly described the crime as a "catastrophic breach" of the bond between a father and daughter.

She said Lekaj became "incensed" and "lost his temper" when Sabrina did not react in the way he expected during the confrontation about her partying.

"The bond between a parent and a child is ordinarily fundamental," she said.

"The crime of filicide involves such a catastrophic breach of that bond that it is difficult for anyone to fathom how you could have done it.

"However it is not my role to search for the meaning or the reason you committed this offence."

She said it was "ironic" that Lekaj confronted his daughter over her drug use when "you too experimented with illicit drugs".

Lekaj spent four-and-a-half years in jail for heroin trafficking in the 1990s and has two cannabis convictions in 2007 and 2009.

'It wasn't a frenzied attack'

Lawyer Ben Sale, for Lekaj, previously told the court his client took a 15-centimetre knife with him when he went to get takeaway food with his daughter on that night.

Sabrina Lekaj was found dead inside her car in Kidman Park. (Supplied: Jana Fandi)

"He took the knife to scare her," he said.

The court previously heard he stabbed her in the abdomen while he sat in the driver's seat and she was in the passenger seat.

He then moved behind her, held his hand over her mouth and stabbed her a further seven times until she died.

"It was the realisation that his daughter — the apple of his eye — has been lying; she's been living another life with friends that involves the use of drugs," Mr Sale said.

"It wasn't a frenzied attack committed in a moment of provocation but a deliberate decision to get out of the car, back in the car, to continue to stab until she's dead.

"The prisoner is troubled by his own motivations as anyone else is."

In a police interview released to the media last week, Lekaj responded with "no comment" to many police questions while at secure mental health facility James Nash House.

But once Detective Sergeant Nicholas Blandford asked the father-of-two how Sabrina received eight stab wounds to her body, he quietly responded: "I did them".

Wife says Lekaj 'never showed any violence'

Sabrina's mother and Lekaj's wife, Romina, did not appear to show any reaction as the sentence was handed down in court.

Romina Lekaj (left) leaves court after her husband's sentence was announced. (ABC News)

Last year she told ABC News the crime was "completely out of the blue" and her husband "never showed any violence" before murdering his daughter.

"He never showed any violence toward any family member or anyone that I know," she said at the time.

She said on the day of the murder her daughter had been in a car accident and had gone out with her father, but never returned.

"It's a lot easier if one is the evil person and one is the victim and you know who to cry for, but you don't actually know the story and you feel for both of them," she said.

"I feel of course, my daughter was my daughter, it's very raw and the pain is like it will never go away.

"It's like I have to learn to live with it but now we [have] lost both of them."