Karen Ristevski murder case has captivated Victoria for nearly a year
THIS is the murder case that has captivated Victoria for nearly a year, after suspect Borce Ristevski claimed his wife, Karen, walked out of their Avondale Heights home “to clear her head” after an argument.
Law & Order
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IT’S almost a year since murder suspect Borce Ristevski claimed his wife, Karen, walked out of their Avondale Heights home “to clear her head” after they argued over money.
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He saw her on the morning of Wednesday, June 29 — and nobody has seen her alive since then.
The twists and turns in the unsolved case during the past 12 months have shocked and captivated Victorians.
While Mr Ristevski, 53, painted it as a missing person case, and detectives from the missing persons squad continue to be in charge of the probe, it has been treated as a murder investigation from just about day one.
Detectives have also treated the husband as a suspect from very early on.
Nothing they have discovered in the past 12 months has changed their view on Borce Ristevski.
He continues to deny he had anything to do with his wife’s disappearance and death. Police have refused to disclose the identity of any other suspects they might be looking at.
But Mr Ristevski did admit to the Herald Sun that after their Bella Bleu boutique in Broadmeadows closed in February last year, the shopping centre had put a caveat on the Ristevskis’ $1.1 million home due to a dispute over money owed.
The murder investigation was complicated just three weeks after Ms Ristevski, 47, was reported missing when her stepson, Anthony Rickard, made a series of bizarre claims to Herald Sun crime reporter Andrea Hamblin.
Mr Ristevski’s estranged son from a previous marriage claimed to have had a troubled relationship with his stepmother and that she was planning on leaving her husband when their daughter, Sarah, turned 21.
He said he lived with his father, stepmother and half-sister Sarah for several years, but claimed a family conflict that was “swept under the carpet” tore them apart.
Then there was the claim by Borce Ristevski’s brother, Vasko, that Ms Ristevski had bought a fake passport and run away overseas to get away from tensions between her and her husband and stepson.
On February 20 this year, her decomposed body was found wedged between two logs by a bushwalker, off a dirt track in the Macedon Regional Park near Loch Rd, Mt Macedon, presumably put there by her killer.
That the body was found in that general area came as no surprise.
The Herald Sun revealed in August last year police had obtained evidence from the phones of Borce and Karen Ristevski that showed on the day she disappeared the phones had been “pinged” off transmission towers on the Calder Freeway.
Mr Ristevski’s phone was last tracked to near Diggers Rest and his wife’s phone had been tracked to near Gisborne — both on the way to where the body was later discovered.
Mr Ristevski made no mention to police — and detectives had obviously asked him to detail his movements — of having driven up the Calder Freeway on the day his wife disappeared until after police revealed the phone-pinging information to him.
He then said that he had borrowed his wife’s 2004 model Mercedes-Benz coupe to check on its faulty fuel gauge. His version of events was that he hit a bump in the road and the fuel gauge fixed itself so he did a U-turn near the Calder Park Raceway — a long way short of Diggers Rest, Gisborne and Mt Macedon — and drove back home.
DNA quickly enabled police to confirm the remains found at Mt Macedon were those of Ms Ristevski.
Borce Ristevski visited his lawyer, Rob Stary, the following day. “It’s pretty clear police have him as their number one suspect,” Mr Stary said at the time.