Time has not healed the wounds or helped to explain the horrors of what happened when Karen Chetcuti was killed either in or near her Whorouly home.
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One year ago, on January 14, 2016, the red Citroen belonging to the 49-year-old was found burnt out in Myrtleford.
The shocking discovery sparked a wide-ranging search by emergency services between the two towns, then became part of a murder investigation when her body was found in scrub near Lake Buffalo on January 18.
The Verbunt family in Melbourne are waiting for answers around what happened to her, but are also still searching for a way to cope with her loss.
Ms Chetcuti’s sister Lena Verbunt said it had been a “horrific” 12 months.
“There’s a lot of anger … you have to live with this for the rest of your life,” she said.
“It’s just so heartbreaking.
“The initial days were worse – sleepless nights after that phone call when she went missing.”
According to her sister, Ms Chetcuti was “the happiest of her life” in Whorouly with her two children, a good job at Wangaratta Council and living on her dream farm where should could happily work in the garden.
“It’s sad for her because she was a really good parent,” Ms Verbunt said.
“It’s horrible for Karen’s kids, I really feel for them.
“I hope they have the strength to keep going.”
The long wait for justice was upsetting for the Verbunts and many other families in in a year the number of murders in Victoria increased.
“I think it’s horrible that more and more people have to go through the pain,” Ms Verbunt said. “None of this should have ever happened.”
Ms Chetcuti’s mum Clary Verbunt has been in counselling for the past year as she continued to struggle with depression following the loss of her daughter.
Just a week before her death, Ms Chetcuti and her two children visited the family in Melbourne.
“I am thinking night and day about them and my only hope is that her children find the strength to carry on with life, but it will be very difficult,” Mrs Verbunt said on the RIP Karen Chetcuti Verbunt Facebook page this week.
“Every thing looked so good, Karen had many plans and she worked so hard – the future looked bright.
“How could this happen?”
About 15 people gathered for a quiet drink in the Whorouly Hotel on Thursday evening, a year to the day after Ms Chetcuti was last spotted alive.
Publican Graham Wood said the town was still hurting from the tragedy.
“You miss her – she was involved in everything, she was such a happy, smiling person,” he said.
“It was good to get together again. A lot of the community are still feeling it and she keeps coming up in our conversations.”
Path to justice for alleged killer starts in two months
Police were sure they found Karen Chetcuti’s killer when they arrested Michael Cardamone in the days following her death, but the Whorouly man has maintained his innocence.
It is alleged he went to her home, next door to his own, then killed her between Whorouly and Dandongadale, before dumping her body off Croppers Creek Road close to Lake Buffalo.
The evidence is set to be tested for the first time at a committal hearing at Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court, starting on March 8.
The last time Cardamone’s lawyer, Brendan Wilkinson, spoke in court, he said police did not have any DNA evidence as part of their case.
He said the identity of Ms Chetcuti’s killer would be the main issue in the case, but the Department of Public Prosecutions has already signalled it did not believe Cardamone’s story.
Barrister for the prosecution, Sarah Thomas, told a court in September Cardamone faked his abduction before his arrest in one of “a series of false statements to cover his tracks”.
He called Wangaratta solicitor Geoff Clancy on the afternoon of January 16 last year to claim he was in the boot of a car after being abducted by two Lebanese.
Cardamone was a person of interest in relation to the disappearance Ms Chetcuti, at the time, but fled from Whorouly to Melbourne while police were searching for her body.