Karen Ristevski murder trial: The case against Borce Ristevski
EVER since Karen Ristevski disappeared from her Avondale Heights home in 2016 it’s a tragedy that has gripped Victoria. This week her husband was committed to stand trial for murder. He says he didn’t do it. This is the case against him.
Law & Order
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A BLACK Mercedes like that driven by Karen Ristevski whizzed across the screen in front of police. It was almost a blur.
Not even slow motion, or the most powerful zoom could capture who was behind the wheel — or any detail on the registration plate.
But the CCTV footage — from the Diggers Rest railway station as the sports car crosses the train tracks about 11.11am on June 29, 2016 — was a vital clue.
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Telecommunications data had already lead police to the area, as it was where Mrs Ristevski’s mobile phone last “pinged” to a tower that same day.
It would later be uncovered it was also near where the missing mother’s body lay.
Other CCTV depicts the car earlier travelling through Avondale Heights where Mrs Ristevski was last seen by her husband, Borce, at their family home.
An SLK 171 roadster, likely a model between 2004 and 2008, a Mercedes expert identifies the car to police after watching the footage numerous times.
It was a match.
The same Mrs Ristevski drove.
But with more than 300 of that model and colour registered in Australia, a tedious task of contacting each and every owner about their whereabouts that day began.
Through a process of elimination, police allege the car in the CCTV had to be Mrs Ristevski’s.
And detectives say it was her husband behind the wheel.
Borce Ristevski, 54, was charged with the murder of his wife of 29 years on December 13 last year.
The knock on the door from Homicide Squad detectives came 18 months after he claimed his wife walked from their house to clear her head after fighting about their fashion boutique, Bella Bleu’s finances.
It was something he claimed his wife was known to do. She always returned within hours, he told police.
But police allege, while Bella Bleu’s finances were dire and there may have been an argument, Mrs Ristevski never walked out.
Instead, her husband incapacitated her in the home, prosecutor Matt Fisher last month told a court.
He then put her body in the black Mercedes, which was concealed in the garage for no prying neighbour eyes to see, instead of his own silver VW car parked outside.
The series of CCTV obtained by police depicts him taking a route up the Calder Freeway towards Loch Rd in Mt Macedon where her body was found eight months later, Mr Fisher said.
The footage forms the bulk of the circumstantial evidence police hope will allow a Supreme Court jury to convict him of murder.
Mobile phone tracking data, police allege, also records both he and his wife’s phones connecting to towers along the way, before he switches them off.
It is evidence his daughter Sarah can’t comprehend.
Overheard on a recording device planted by investigators she quizzed her dad as to how his phone was recorded on the Calder Freeway.
“That’s what they are trying to plant out there, Sarah,” her father told her.
When she said “that doesn’t make sense”, he replied: “Nothing makes sense as they are making it up as they go.”
Her father then tells her where he really was that day.
“I went to get shisha — that’s actually where I was, you know,” he said, adding he’d kept it from police as he wasn’t sure if the flavoured tobacco was legal.
Detectives had always suspected Mr Ristevski of misleading them and lying about his movements on the day his wife disappeared.
There were “numerous discrepancies” in his story, a court heard, including whether his wife left through the front door or garage door, and if they fought upstairs or downstairs.
He also failed to tell investigators he had driven his wife’s car on the day she went missing, only revealing it when police asked on their ninth interaction with him, Mr Fisher said.
In his first statement, he recalled to police staying at home to do bookkeeping, having a shower and going out to do an Uber driving shift in the afternoon.
That changed, police say, to the father claiming he took his wife’s car for a drive in the morning to fill it up as the fuel gauge was broken.
Mrs Ristevski’s aunt Patricia Gray said his story was “flimsy” and “hard to fathom”.
“I could tell Borce wasn’t assisting police or himself to find Karen which I found frustrating,” Ms Gray told police.
But one account has not changed.
Mr Ristevski has consistently been adamant he had nothing to do with his wife’s death.
On July 4, 2016, Detective Sergeant Graham Hamilton, from the Missing Persons Squad, asked him: “Borce, is there something you want to tell me? People, good people make mistakes. Has something happened?”
Mr Ristevski responded: “I knew I shouldn’t have come in. They told me I was too tired.”
Det-Sgt Hamilton pressed again: “Look if something has happened, it’s understandable that people react differently. Has something happened?”
But he did not cave to what his defence lawyers described in court as a homicide squad technique used to gain a confession from suspects.
“What do you want me to say? Nothing happened,” Mr Ristevski replied.
Again, when he was arrested and charged with murder in December, he said “You tell me” when police asked him what happened to his wife.
And this week, in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, it was no different.
As Magistrate Sue Cameron committed him to stand trial before a jury, he defiantly stood in the dock and again declared his innocence.
“Not guilty,” he said when asked how he pleaded to the murder charge.