‘Sweet justice is on its way’: Friends of slain woman Karen Ristevski react to husband’s guilty plea
Karen Ristevski’s friends have expressed relief her husband admitted to killing her but are concerned details will remain a secret.
Friends of slain Melbourne woman Karen Ristevski have expressed relief that her husband has finally admitted to killing her but remain concerned they might never find out what really happened.
The group, who include friends of Karen’s from her school days, have had a mixed reaction to Borce Ristevski’s decision to plead guilty to manslaughter, having denied any culpability for Two-and-a-half years.
Sharryn Celhar Hili, who has known Karen since the pair went to Deep Park Secondary College in Melbourne’s west, expressed concern that he would walk away with a minimal jail term.
“He will get five years less,” Ms Celhar Hili said in a Facebook post in response to a friend who posted a photo of the couple with the words: “Sweet justice is on its way”.
“And noooo info will come out, and no witnesses called.”
Kelly Lavin knew Karen socially through friends and said she was reluctant to express an opinion on the plea.
“I’ve already mourned her death,” she said.
“I’m still angry at everything that’s happened. But it is what it is.”
Ms Lavin, who grew up in Melbourne, is among a group of women who have had a photo of themselves and Karen posted to their Facebook pages. The photo, taken at a social gathering at the Deep Park Club, features nine smiling women as they squeezing together for the shot.
It appears to have been taken not long before she disappeared in June 2016, apparently walking away from her Avondale Heights home after a row with her husband over money.
Her decomposed body was found in bushland in the Macedon Ranges, about an hour away, in February the next year.
Ristevski’s manslaughter confession on Wednesday has averted the need for a murder trial and despite previously gunning for the more serious charge and Victoria’s top police officer yesterday said he was satisfied with the outcome.
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said the plea would allow “justice to move through the courts more quickly”.
“Certainly for people required to give evidence and other members of the family … it speeds up the process, and it’s all part of that bargaining, that plea situation that is dealt with as a matter of course,” he told ABC radio.
“(I’m) not disappointed. Everyone worked very hard on that case. The police … will be sort of relieved in a way too they will be able to move through with that plea.”
Ristevski, 55, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his fashion shop-owner wife Karen almost three years after she went missing and on the eve of a scheduled five-week murder trial.
Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale ruled that Ristevski’s actions after the killing — when he played the role of grieving husband, making public appeals for her whereabouts and then acting as pallbearer at her eventual funeral — could not be used to prove “murderous intent”.
Prosecutors subsequently filed a new indictment with the lesser charge of manslaughter, to which Ristevski admitted.
In previous hearings, prosecutors pushed hard for a murder trial, saying Ristevski’s deceitful behaviours after the killing gave rise to the required intent.
Mr Ashton said cases built on circumstantial evidence were always challenging rather than drawing on direct evidence.
“When you build those circumstantial cases, it can be a laborious and painstaking and often can in some cases come down to a jury accepting the circumstantial matters, proving beyond reasonable doubt that a certain set of facts has occurred,” he said.
Ristevski was charged in December 2017 after a lengthy investigation that involved listening devices and CCTV footage analysis.
He allegedly killed his 47-year-old wife at home and later and took her Mercedes-Benz to dispose of the body in bushland.
Ristevski will face a pre-sentence hearing on March 27.
With AAP
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