Missing Melbourne mum Karen Ristevski: Andrew Rule takes in-depth look
IT WAS the first month of winter when Karen Ristevski vanished from her home. Andrew Rule takes an in-depth look at a case that has gripped the public’s imagination.
VIC News
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IT was the first month of winter when the wife, mother, stepmother and boutique proprietor, Karen Ristevski, vanished from her home on a hill overlooking the Maribyrnong River in Avondale Heights.
It is now the first month of spring. As weeks have turned into months, the mystery of the missing woman has not been forgotten but has grown deeper and more sinister. It has become a universal topic of conversation in Victoria — like football but darker.
Workmates chew it over most days. Even strangers strike up conversations about a case that has gripped the public’s imagination. Just as the Jill Meagher case did, just as the Wales-King “society murders” did 14 years ago and the Jaidyn Leskie mystery did before that.
Sparking that interest, perhaps, is that the 47-year-old missing woman seemed so much like the rest of us — an ordinary suburban person doing the best she could to get ahead, not part of the criminal underclass whose violence is shocking but no longer surprising.
And there is a hint of suburban glamour: the friendly and attractive woman runs a boutique, drives a snappy car and is a friend of actor Samuel Johnson, who made an emotional plea for information to shed light on the mystery back in July.
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Families can pass as ordinary without being normal, let alone happy.
Under the blowtorch of police and public scrutiny, cracks have appeared in the Ristevski household. These flaws might have nothing to do with solving the case, but they heighten interest in it.
Three weeks after Mrs Ristevski disappeared, her stepson — son of her husband, Borce — told Herald Sun reporter Andrea Hamblin he was harbouring a secret.
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Anthony Rickard, who uses his mother’s surname, says he moved in with the Ristevskis when he was 14.
They provided the troubled teenager with food, clothing and a room of his own.
Despite the affection he was given, the youth became a serious drug user who, at 32, admits he still uses “ice”.
It would be understandable if the police saw him as a suspect for his stepmother’s disappearance, he says, because of what he has alleged about her unusual relationship with him.
On one hand, he criticises Mrs Ristevski, but on the other, he says: “I don’t hate her, because I can’t — she showed me love.”
He claims he called Mrs Ristevski to confront her about their “secret” about 10 days before she disappeared.
Afterwards, he could not help fearing that what he said during that highly charged telephone call had led to her disappearance.
Detectives had to weigh up this information.
If Mr Rickard’s allegation is true — and there is no reason to dismiss it out of hand — then police have to judge whether it might have sparked a bitter family conflict.
The case is littered with loose ends, red herrings and questions. Starting with why police weren’t told Mrs Ristevski had vanished until three days later.
Her husband initially said she left the house with her handbag and $850 cash to go for a walk in the river valley park to calm down after they had argued about poor takings from their Bella Bleu boutique at Taylors Lakes.
Borce Ristevski would later say the argument was in fact not about money, an about-face that seems to be another twist in a case full of them.
In any event, the reasons for the argument don’t answer a blunt question voiced by one puzzled neighbour: “Why would you go for a walk along the valley with your handbag and purse?”
There are other baffling inconsistencies.
When Mr Rickard claimed last month he had overheard his stepmother talking about leaving her husband when their daughter, Sarah, turned 21, which she just had, Mr Ristevski angrily denied it.
“Why would he come up with that?” he demanded, suggesting his son was an unreliable witness because of his drug addiction.
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But when Mr Ristevski’s brother, Vasko, went public with a theory that his missing sister-in-law had fled to China or the US on a false passport, Borce Ristevski was not so dismissive.
IN a touching display of brotherly loyalty, Vasko Ristevski, of Hoppers Crossing, told the Herald Sun’s Andrew Jefferson his younger brother did not have it in him to murder his wife.
“A lot of husbands do that for some reason, but no way is Borce capable of that,” he said.
“I reckon she’s run away.
“That’s my feeling, what with all the rumours going on about Anthony.”
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He said Mrs Ristevski had travelled to America and Hong Kong on business for the past 10 years “and I’m told it’s fairly easy to get a false passport”.
The last time Mrs Ristevski was seen was June 29, a Wednesday. It wasn’t until July 2, the following Saturday, distraught daughter Sarah told police and made a plea for help to find her mother. Six days later, police interviewed Borce, who maintained he and Karen had argued at the house over finances before she left for a walk to “clear her head” about 10am.
Such a walk presumably had to be along any of the paths that meander over the steep grasslands that rise from the bank of the Maribyrnong and stretch for kilometres.
Remarkably, none of the strollers, joggers and dog walkers saw the missing woman walking there.
It was initially suggested there was no sign on the house’s security cameras of her leaving by the shortest and most obvious route — from the back door to the back garden gate — to reach the nearest walking path. But, weeks later, Mr Ristevski said the security cameras had not worked for several months.
Mrs Ristevski could have left by the front door and then doubled back down a lane beside the house to reach the riverside paths, but that seemed odd enough to make investigators wonder.
It was also revealed Mr Ristevski had checked with neighbours to see if their cameras had picked up any sign of Karen’s movements.
But they hadn’t, meaning there is no proof she had walked from the house at all.
The most reasonable alternative scenario is she had left by car — but, again, there is no usable security footage to support that. Which meant investigators were left wondering if, in fact, she had been taken away hidden in the boot or back seat of a car.
If so, which car — and who was driving?
Publicly, police went through the necessary motions of searching the Avondale Heights parklands near the Oakley Drive house.
Mounted police and mountain bikes turned out for the media cameras and the water police did a few sweeps of the river, including a search near the bridge downstream near the Anglers Arms hotel.
Meanwhile, however, investigators were working hard behind the scenes, most likely on the theory that wherever the missing woman turned up, it probably wouldn’t be in the same postcode.
The bleak reality is Mrs Ristevski’s bank accounts, credit cards and mobile telephone have not been used.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, as the weeks pass, that is a sign searchers are looking for a body.
It would take a sophisticated fugitive months or years to set up their disappearance so flawlessly — and such a person would need hefty cash reserves, false documentation and convincing disguises.
In the past, a few cunning criminals have pulled that off.
Armed robber and prison escapee Russell Cox spent years on the run, but he had hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen cash and a network of friends and safe houses, while another brilliant crook, Gregory “Doc” Smith, managed to flee Australia and stay on the run overseas for 10 years after escaping Pentridge Prison.
But that was last century, when electronic surveillance and detection was crude.
Mrs Ristevski is missing in 2016, with $850 cash and a handbag and the clothes she was wearing — and she is no counter-surveillance expert or master criminal, she’s just the mum of a 21-year-old who wants her back.
It’s not giving away secret law enforcement “methodology” to state the obvious: police will have studied vehicle and mobile telephone movements.
CAR movements and phone use are the basic tools that can show if there are any holes in the stories of people who interest investigators most.
Such as, for instance, whether anyone has neglected to mention when and where they travelled around the key times on June 29.
Stress plays tricks with people’s memories.
It was not until late last month that police jogged Borce Ristevski’s memory, divulging that on the day his wife vanished, her mobile phone had been traced to the Gisborne area, 40km from Avondale Heights.
On the same day, Mr Ristevski’s phone was also detected on the Calder Highway near Diggers Rest, but, oddly, it had been turned off for two hours that day.
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Once reminded, Mr Ristevski recalled he had driven his wife’s 2004 Mercedes-Benz that day, saying the car’s fuel gauge was faulty, so he took it for a spin.
He said the gauge had corrected itself after he hit a bump in the road so he returned home without attempting to repair it.
Police carried out tests on soil traces found on two cars parked at the Ristevski house.
If and when anyone is arrested over the disappearance and likely killing of Karen Ristevski, one thing is likely: detectives will be surprised if the suspect does not eventually lead them to some spot he (or she) knew.
It’s a pattern repeated in serious crimes everywhere.
Incriminating weapons or clothing might be tossed away anywhere, often into water, but those involved in a serious crime rarely hide anything substantial — such as a body or loot — in a random place they have never been to.
Under extreme stress, it is human nature to seek the familiar — examples of this tendency are well known to the homicide squad, but the Wales-King case stands out.
Matthew Wales-King was suspected by investigators (and some relatives) of killing his mother, Margaret, and stepfather Paul King well before such suspicions became public.
Wales-King rented a trailer using his own credit card to transport the bodies from the murder scene at his house in Burke Rd, Malvern.
He took them to bushland off a track near Marysville — where he had gone camping as a schoolboy years earlier.
There he did something else many murderers do; he “buried” the bodies so hurriedly and so poorly they were found by park rangers less than four weeks later.
Investigators, reporters and the public have heard many conflicting and confusing versions of what might have happened to Karen Ristevski.
But as the mystery moves from two months old to three, Vasko’s words sound all the more ominous.
“I don’t think she will come back,” he said late last month. “I reckon she’s gone for good.”
MORE:
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SIXTEEN DAYS: IT’S TIME FOR HARD QUESTIONS, SAYS ANDREW RULE
MISSING KAREN TWIST: STEPSON REVEALS FAMILY CONFLICT
KAREN PLANNED TO LEAVE HUSBAND, STEPSON SAYS
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