Kaliopi Roumeliotis killed by husband Joe Lo Bianco in vicious two-minute assault

A man who murdered his wife in an ambush attack in their garage hid his bloodied clothes and acted like nothing had happened before inviting his 11-year-old daughter to go into the garage to find her.

Horrific details of the killing were aired in the Supreme Court on Wednesday where Joe Lo Bianco has pleaded guilty to murder. Picture: Nadir Kinani

A man bludgeoned his wife to death in the garage of their family home before staging the scene as an accidental fall and inviting their young daughter to go and find her.

Kaliopi Roumeliotis’s fitness watch recorded her taking two steps from her vehicle before Joe Lo Bianco ambushed her with a metal car ramp in a vicious two-minute assault at their suburban Melbourne home about 7.15pm on November 30, 2022.

The loving mother’s heart rate while driving moments earlier ranged between 53 and 81 beats per minute.

But soon after taking those two steps, it spiked to 162 beats per minute.

Joe Lo Bianco, 53, bludgeoned his wife, Kaliopi Roumeliotis, to death.

By 7.17pm, the 51-year-old’s heart rate had dropped to 69 beats per minute, with no further beats detected.

Her husband of 16 years then manoeuvred the car ramp under her neck to make it look like she had fallen to her death.

Lo Bianco, 53, then cleaned himself up, hid his bloodied clothes, before going to his in-laws who lived next door where he acted like nothing had happened, talking about plans for his wife’s upcoming birthday.

When his 11-year-old daughter soon after came home from a friend’s birthday party and asked where her mother was, Lo Bianco said she wasn’t home yet.

But when the girl mentioned she thought her car was in the garage, Lo Bianco replied: “Do you want to go and say hi?”

Lo Bianco outside the Supreme Court after pleading guilty to murdering his wife. Picture: Brendan Beckett

He then followed his daughter into the garage, where she found the bloodied scene.

The girl ran next door to her uncle’s home to raise the alarm, screaming: “My mum’s bleeding on the face – I think she’s dying.”

Lo Bianco called Triple 0, saying his wife – a senior scientist in pathology at Austin Hospital – had tripped and hit her head.

When paramedics arrived, he paced up and down in the garage and acted hysterically, remarking: “This doesn’t happen in the movies. They bring them back. You need to save her. Save her like you do in the movies.”

But Ms Roumeliotis could not be saved – with her heartbroken family detailing how her badly beaten face had to be reconstructed for her funeral.

The horrific details were aired in the Supreme Court on Wednesday where Lo Bianco has pleaded guilty to murder.

His daughter, in a victim impact statement read out in court, told her father she did not want him in her life any more.

“You have no idea how much you have hurt me,” she said.

“My mum’s love was like being in a hug forever — and you made her let go.”

Other family and friends spoke of their heartache of losing Ms Roumeliotis in such horrific circumstances, remembering her for her “infectious laugh”, “stunning smile”, “zest for fashion” and “impeccable organisation skills”.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC told the court Lo Bianco and Ms Roumeliotis’s marriage “had the outward appearance of harmony”.

But behind closed doors, they were constantly fighting about finances after Lo Bianco lost his job at Australia Post because he refused to get Covid vaccinations.

Ms Rogers said the couple had a “misalignment of views” regarding Covid and the jabs.

The couple’s daughter told police her parents had fought the morning of the killing, with her mother telling her father that he needed “to bring money to the house otherwise we aren’t going to be here much longer”.

Despite this, in the hours before the murder, while Ms Roumeliotis was at work, Lo Bianco was captured on CCTV at a pub gambling for more than three hours.

Lo Bianco will be sentenced in October.