A law inspired by the killing of Australian-born schoolgirl Zarah Clare Baker was passed Thursday in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The law imposes stiffer punishment for anyone disposing body secretly to conceal death.

District Attorney Jay Gaither, who supported the passage of the law, admitted it will not deter crimes involving cutting of a victim's body into pieces but rather aims to impose longer prison sentence to those found guilty of doing so.

Baker's stepmother, Elisa, 43, was sentenced in September to 15 years in prison for second-degree murder after dismembering the girl and hiding her body parts weeks before reporting to police that she was missing from their Hickory, North Carolina home.
Elisa plea bargained for a non-first degree murder charge in exchange for showing where Baker's body parts were buried. Gaither accepted the deal to secure the evidence that will convict her.

With the new law, Gaither said such crime will have a punishment of more than 20 years in prison.

Baker was born in the NSW town of Wagga Wagga to Adam Baker and Emily Dietrich. Dietrich, who was 19 at the time, gave up custody of her daughter to her husband. Adam Baker then met Elisa online and they got married.

Under her stepmother's care, Baker was maltreated. Teachers at Hudson Elementary, where Baker briefly attended, had documented the physical abuses.

At the time she was murdered, Baker was a handicap with a prosthetic leg and had hearing problems caused by her treatment for bone cancer diagnosed when she was 5.

Elisa never revealed how she killed Baker only admitting she scattered her body parts across rural Caldwell County. His husband and Baker's biological father was not charged.

Zarah Baker