A man who stomped his girlfriend to death at the back of a Broome shopping centre last year has been found guilty of murder.

On a hot March day in Broome last year, Les McLarty was so drunk he could not tell detectives why he kicked his 23-year-old girlfriend to death.

The badly beaten body of Ms Chapman, whose first name has not been used for cultural reasons, was found in an alcove at Broome's Paspaley Plaza Shopping Centre on March 18, 2017.

Over the course of a four-day Supreme Court trial in Broome this week, the court was told how an alcohol-fuelled argument between the pair descended into violence.

McLarty, who pleaded not guilty to murder, repeatedly kicked Ms Chapman in her head and stomach, before leaving her in the stairwell to die.

The jury took four hours to find McLarty guilty of murder on Friday.

A question of intent

McLarty has always admitted to attacking Ms Chapman, doing so repeatedly to homicide squad detectives after his arrest in March and at the start of the trial.

But defence counsel Tony Hager insisted McLarty had never intended to kill her.

Mr Hager had asked the jury to convict the 21-year-old of manslaughter instead.

Ms Chapman was found dead at the bottom of this staircase after McLarty kicked her to death. ( ABC Kimberley: Sam Tomlin )

It left the jury in the unusual position of deciding between two guilty verdicts, with a finding that McLarty intended to cause an injury serious enough to cause Ms Chapman's death enough to convict him of murder.

Prosecutor Bernard Standish said the admissions McLarty made to police during an interview after his arrest demonstrated his desire to inflict pain.

"He had kicked his girlfriend in both the head and the guts. He had assaulted her in quite a severe way," he told the court.

"It was a terrible, cowardly act.

"Asked as to the reason for this argument, he said, 'I dunno'."

Mr Hager said McLarty's state of intoxication needed to be taken into account.

"He was a mindless drunk, and it would be difficult to conclude any meaningful thought was going through his mind," he told the jury.

"This was an extremely intoxicated man acting on the sudden, giving no thought to what he was doing."

But Mr Standish said footage of McLarty searching for cigarette butts after leaving the scene showed little sign of drunkenness, and that he was thinking clearly.

Violence a symptom of broader problems

As the Kimberley's administrative heart, Broome attracts large numbers of itinerant travellers from outlying communities.

Their circumstances leave women and children particularly vulnerable to violence — circumstances highlighted throughout McLarty's trial.

In his closing argument, Mr Hager asked jurors to consider their state of mind on isolated occasions they had overindulged.

"This wasn't the life of employment or nine-to-five daily grind. Clearly Mr McLarty was drinking to excess," he said.

"Imagine that is every day."

Justice Lindy Jenkins remanded McLarty into custody ahead of his sentencing in Perth next month.