Her birthday on July 22, 2018 was the starting point.
And then she was murdered.
She pulled into her garage at Cowes, on Phillip Island, after driving her three children to school on July 23.
Her estranged husband Adrian James Basham was lying in wait.
He savagely beat her, leaving 41 separate blunt force injuries, tied a noose around her neck and hanged her from the garage door, staging her killing as a suicide.
"By any measure, your offending was extremely grave. You invaded the legal and physical sanctity of Ms Fraser's home and subjected her to a savage beating before hanging her," Justice Lesley Taylor said.
"Her last conscious moments would have passed in terror."
Basham, now 46, was jailed for life on Monday and ordered to serve at least 30 years.
Ms Fraser's family and friends clapped as Basham was led out after his sentencing in the Victorian Supreme Court.
Justice Taylor found it was most likely Basham surprised Ms Fraser as she sat in the driver's seat of her car, having waited more than two hours in the garage for her to return home.
They met in 2005 and married in 2007, and after years of domineering and controlling behaviour Ms Fraser left the relationship in 2017.
Basham was charged in August that year with raping her during their marriage and she was due to give evidence against him a week later.
His premeditated murder of Ms Fraser, motivated by his desire to avoid standing trial for rape, was selfish in the extreme and displayed an extraordinary degree of entitlement, Justice Taylor said.
"Your decision to execute Samantha Fraser, a woman who found the courage to defy you, keep your children safe from you and live a life free from you, was cold.
"You determined that her life was expendable ... and you had the arrogance to think you would not be caught."
She found Basham was "unmoved" in the face of numerous statements detailing the pain he had caused his own children by killing their mother.
Ms Fraser, 38, had told a friend she was feeling strong and determined to have her voice heard in court.
But despite that she was terrified of him. An intervention order was in place, Ms Fraser's parents had moved in with her to help protect her and less than 48 hours before her death Ms Fraser said she was being more vigilant about her safety after Basham was spotted on the island.
The day before she died she celebrated her birthday. Her previous birthday was horrible, she told her partner, but in a text to him on the day she died, she revealed this birthday would mark the beginning of a wonderful new stage of life.
Ms Fraser's parents described her as a mother who loved her children fiercely, a mother who was the very centre of her children's universe.
They were five, seven and nine when she died.
Now a teen, her eldest daughter said nothing would compare to the damage Basham had done to her and her family's lives.
"He murdered my mum. He took Sammy's life and in doing so destroyed so many others."
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