Shocked and angry: Karen Ristevski's friends react to daughter's bombshell interview
Friends of Victorian mother Karen Ristevski say they were disappointed to hear her daughter Sarah once again defend her killer father and label him as “loving” and “caring” given the crime he committed.
The 47-year-old woman’s body was found eight months after she disappeared from the family’s Avondale Heights home.
In December, Borce Ristevski was sentenced to 13 years in jail after Victoria’s Court of Appeal added to his sentence for the manslaughter of his wife at the request of prosecutors.
“Somebody who is kind and caring doesn’t leave somebody that they profess to love, to the elements,” said Karen’s childhood friend, Sam, to Nine’s A Current Affair.
Sam had helped search for Ms Ristevski and reportedly came a few metres within her decomposing body which was discovered in bushland off a road at Mount Macedon in February 2017.
Speaking to 60 Minutes on Sunday night, Sarah Ristevski opened up on her mother’s disappearance.
“I just think, ‘Why Mum? Why did something happen to her? Why us?’ You hear about things that could happen and you don’t think they could happen to you and your family,” said Sarah.
“She’s on my mind all the time and I can’t get it out of my head.
“I have no doubt in my mind that my dad loves my mum, I have no doubt in my mind and he’s hurting as much as I am.”
Sam spoke about how she felt after she watched the interview.
“How she could find those words within herself to describe him?” she told A Current Affair.
“It makes me very angry but also very, very sad because I hoped to kind of get closure last night.
“I feel for Steven, Karen’s brother, for the rest of her family.
“In my mind, she (Sarah) would be hurt.”
Before Borce Ristevski admitted to killing his wife, Sarah wrote to the missing persons squad Detective Timothy Ryan that she was “disgusted” by what the media was saying about her father.
Sarah did not attend her father’s court hearings and when she did, kept her face hidden from cameras.
The only time she did offer a comment was in a glowing character reference she gave a judge prior to her father’s sentencing.
She called him “loving, caring, sympathetic, protective and charismatic”.