Wife-killer Borce Ristevski to learn appeal fate within four months
Borce Ristevski will soon learn if he will cop more jail time for killing his wife and dumping her body in a shallow bush grave. Ristevski’s minimum six-year sentence stunned Victoria and left prosecutors fuming.
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Remorseless wife killer Borce Ristevski will learn in under four months if his “manifestly inadequate” sentence will be increased.
Victoria’s Court of Appeal will consider the prosecution’s appeal on November 13.
The Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd QC wants Ristevski locked up for longer.
Ms Judd lodged an appeal in May following widespread public outrage over Ristevski’s minimum six-year jail term for killing his wife, Karen.
Ristevski, 55, had denied any involvement in his wife’s death, claiming she walked from their family home at Avondale Heights after a fight about finances on June 29, 2016.
Even when her body was found eight months later in a shallow grave he was adamant he knew nothing of the circumstances of her demise.
But the reality was, he had killed her in the house that morning and put her body in the boot of her black Mercedes coupe, before dumping it between two logs in bushland near Mt Macedon.
It wasn’t until the eve of his murder trial in March this year that he pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
The 11th-hour confession came after Supreme Court judge Christopher Beale ruled the father’s conduct after the killing could not be relied on to prove murderous intent.
The ruling left the prosecution having to withdraw the murder charge.
The maximum penalty for manslaughter is 20 years’ jail.
But on April 18, Justice Beale sentenced Ristevski to just nine years’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of six years, meaning he could be out on the streets as early as 2023.
The experienced judge said Ristevski’s silence on what happened on the morning he killed his wife made it impossible to determine the seriousness of his crime.
“Without knowing the level and duration of violence perpetrated by you which caused your wife’s death, I simply cannot say whether your offending was mid or upper-range,” Justice Beale said.
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“You may have turned off the road of deceit, but you have not taken the high road of full and frank disclosure, consistent with true remorse.”
What caused Mrs Ristevski’s death could not be established because her body was so badly decomposed when found.
But prosecutors argued it was a serious case of manslaughter because Mrs Ristevski had been killed at home, where she should have felt safe, by a husband of 27 years she had trusted.
They also said the complete disdain he showed for his wife, and the mother of their daughter, Sarah, by dumping her body, his web of lies, lack of remorse, and refusal to say how she died were inconsistent with any other interpretation.