2017: Karen Ristevski found dead in Melbourne's Mount Macedon / 7 News
Accused killer Borce Ristevski was forced to listen to evidence about the condition of his wife's body after it was found in bushland north of Melbourne last year.
Today, in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, a forensic pathologist described injuries sustained by New Zealand-born Karen Ristevski, 47.
Professor Stephen Cordner told the court Karen Ristevski had an irregular break in her hyoid bone — a bone in the neck — that could have been the result of a number of things, including blunt force trauma.
Karen Ristevski with her husband Borce Ristevski and daughter Sarah.
He said it was difficult to say exactly what happened to her because her body was found eight months after she went missing in the early hours of June 29, 2016.
Borce Ristevski, 54, is facing the second week of a committal hearing to determine if there is enough evidence for the case against him to go to trial.
Police allege he killed his wife after an argument at their home in Avondale Heights before driving her car north and dumping her body at Mount Macedon.
Karen Ristevski's decomposed body was found shoeless between two logs in February last year.
Avondale Heights Senior Constable Ahmet Cagrier also gave evidence today. He was questioned about information in his statement from August 2016, two months after he interviewed the accused.
Cagrier was asked whether it was possible he remembered incorrectly details of a conversation he had with Borce Ristevski the day after his wife went missing.
Ristevski's lawyer, David Hallowes, SC, asked if the officer could be 100 per cent certain his client told him he and his wife argued in an upstairs bedroom before she left via the front door.
"In your statement, you indicate Mr Ristevski told you it happened upstairs? It is possible he mentioned it happened downstairs or that she'd gone upstairs after?" Mr Hallowes asked.
"You made your statement two months later. Is it possible Mr Ristevski didn't say to you that the discussion took place upstairs? A couple of months later you're doing your best to recall and you think 'Oh the argument took place upstairs'?"
"Quite possible," the officer replied. "I didn't write it down at the time."
He said it was also possible that Ristevski did not tell him his wife left by the front door and instead may have told him she "went out the front".
Karen Ristevski.
"Yeah, that's possible," he said.
Last week, the court heard from witnesses including CCTV specialists, detectives and family members.
Optus technician Oleg Prypoten gave evidence on Monday and Tuesday about mobile phone towers along the Calder Freeway detecting "pings" from the phones of Ristevski and his wife in the hours after she went missing.
The Calder Freeway is the most direct route from Avondale Heights to Mount Macedon.
The court heard last week how Ristevski went Uber driving before having dinner with his parents on the day his wife went missing.
He did not tell his parents that his wife had not returned home from a walk to "clear her head" and he did not ask his daughter if she had seen her mother.
Borce Ristevski's daughter, Sarah, 22, made a teary appearance in the witness box where she talked at length about the relationship between her mother and father.
Under cross-examination by Hallowes, Sarah Ristevski told the court her parents fought every few weeks but her father was "the calming influence" and "never demonstrative".
"Dad was a calming influence. Mum would get annoyed quickly. Dad was always the calm one, calming her down," she said.
The case against Borce Ristevski was presented in a summary on Monday by lead prosecutor Matt Fisher, who said the couple's boutique fashion store, Bella Bleu, had been losing money for years.
