Police have charged a Borce Ristevski with the murder of Melbourne mum Karen Ristevski 18 months after she first went missing.
The Avondale Heights man was arrested around 7:20am this morning and charged with one count of murder. He will appear before Melbourne Magistrate’s Court this morning.
His lawyer says the 53-year-old will plead not guilty to the charges he has strenuously denied throughout the ordeal.
Karen’s body was found eight months after she went missing in the Mt Macedon Regional Park on February 20th after having a fight with her husband, Borce Ristevski.
Mr Ristevski told detectives he’d taken Karen’s car for a drive on the Calder Freeway but when pressed, he couldn’t account for “almost an hour and forty minutes”.
Both their phones were traced to be on the Calder Freeway that day but Mr Ristevski’s phone was turned off for two hours. The couple’s daughter Sarah, now 22, was interviewed by police too, being the last person to see her mother before the row with her father.
Earlier this year, a witness came forward to tell homicide detectives they saw a man standing next to murdered mother Karen Ristevski’s car, close to where her body was discovered.
The yet-to-be identified man was alone with the car in the Mt Macedon area in the time before the distressing discovery of her body.
The man was allegedly seen just 1.5km from where the 47-year-old’s remains were eventually found.
At the time, Detective Inspector Tim Day from the Missing Persons Squad told assembled journalists he didn’t doubt they would find Mrs Ristevski’s murderer.
“I have every confidence we will solve this case,” he said.
