Borce Ristevski impassive in face of accusations that he killed wife, Karen
BORCE Ristevski has shown little emotion since the disappearance of his wife, Karen, two years ago — and if he was upset by the murder allegations against him, he didn’t show it, writes Patrick Carlyon.
Law & Order
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BORCE Ristevski has said little and shown little emotion since the disappearance of his wife, Karen, two years ago.
Not when her body turned up in the Mount Macedon Regional Park eight months after the morning she supposedly left for work from their Avondale Heights home. Not when he carried her coffin in silent tribute at her funeral.
BORCE WAS DRIVING AN UBER ON DAY KAREN WENT MISSING: COURT
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He maintained the impassive pose at the start of his committal hearing on Monday. The sideshows of her death — and they tumbled into the start of Tuesday’s proceedings — have never been of his making.
He didn’t look at the gallery, which sniffled and coughed in Melbourne’s winter malaise. His features were set, his hands clasped. He wore a black suit and white open-neck shirt. And sat in solitary stillness.
If he was upset by the allegations against him, he didn’t show it. He offered no outward response as the prosecution set out a case in which he had spoken often — behind closed doors — to police about what happened on June 29, 2016.
The prosecution argued his accounts had been muddled. “Variations” they called the alleged shifts in his story, “inconsistencies”.
The circumstantial case amounted to this: that Ristevski killed his wife that morning, then took her and her phone in her black Mercedes to bushland where he dumped her body.
The untested theory offered answers to some — if not all — of the many questions that have fascinated the public. It impressed with its reliance on the sorts of technology that have proved critical in so many high-profile cases in recent years, such as CCTV footage to mobile phone locations and data.
We were told, for example, that Karen Ristevski’s black Mercedes may have consumed 18.2 litres of fuel for a 136-minute trip on the day of her death. We did not hear, however, how she might have died.
Ristevski, it was revealed, had a great many discussions with police in those few weeks afterwards.
Some of them were secretly recorded. The prosecution case hinted of sinister motivations in suburbia — a couple in hundreds of thousands of debt.
After Ristevksi killed his wife, the prosecution alleged, he went Uber driving then had dinner with his parents — where he did not reveal that his wife was missing.
Prosecutor Matt Fisher detailed “inconsistencies” in Ristevksi’s story over a dozen or more police contacts.
At first, Ristevski said he had stayed at home on June 29, 2016. Then he said he drove her car to re-fuel it.
The gauge was faulty, he said, but had appeared to correct itself after he drove over bumps.
In his 11th “police contact”, according to the prosecution, Ristevski spoke of driving on the Calder Freeway and returning home by noon, before being contacted by a staff member at his wife’s boutique who said she had not turned up to work.
The prosecution said that Ristevski again changed his recollection at the 12th police contact.
He appeared to turn off his mobile phone at 11.09am — at least it was disconnected from the network.
His wife’s phone remained on, and was detected by phone towers in following minutes near Diggers Rest, Sunbury and Gisborne.
It was last marked by a tower near Gisborne South at 11.40am.
By the time Ristevksi’s phone was reactivated after 102 minutes off the air, police allege the black Mercedes was spotted in Keilor East.
The prosecution argues that owners of the same make and model black Mercedes have been eliminated as being in the area at the same time.
Where the case gets really macabre is after Ristevski got home.
He rang his wife several times, and left a message at 1.48pm.
After this, he was alleged to take the black Mercedes for another drive, despite denying taking the car out again.
He tried her again — for the last time that day — at 7.17pm that night, but appeared to make no calls to friends or acquaintances about her disappearance.
Expert testing of the car showed that under various scenarios — given the fuel used and duration — that it was “highly plausible” that the black Mercedes could have made the trip to Mount Macedon.
INSIDE THE COPS’ 532-DAY RISTEVSKI MARATHON
Ristevski was accused of deliberately excluding and information and misleading police in court on Monday. Yet he remained unmoved, apart from wiping his nose from time to time.
As he did when details of his wife’s remains were aired, between and under logs. And when the first witness, a doctor and forensic entomologist, spoke about the speed of insect colonisations according to the positioning of remains.
She was the first of dozens of witnesses expected in the 10-day hearing, all of them offering evidence in a sad story which may never make much sense.