It was the million-dollar question that didn’t come with a lifeline.

But Ryan Williams needed one, so he called a friend.

The phone call came late at night more than 24 hours after Williams had collected Shana Wilkinson from her mother’s Redlands Road home in Corowa on Friday night, September 18, 2009.

“If you raped and killed someone, what would you do with the body?”

The friend, in Wangaratta, didn’t find anything sinister in the question.

Ryan was known as a bit of a prankster capable of saying random stuff, especially when he was drinking.

And as the policeman who led the investigation Det-Sgt Paul Stares says: “You don’t expect that your friend has just killed someone.”

There was, however, another man with the Wangaratta friend when Ryan called.

When the question was relayed to him, he instantly felt uneasy.

Uneasiness became grave suspicion when he saw a television report a few days later detailing the disappearance of Shana Wilkinson.

He went to police and said: “I don’t know if this is anything, but …”

It was more than just something — that phone call was one of the keys to Williams’ arrest.

But, almost two years later, so much about that late-night phone call makes so little sense.

The obvious peculiarity was Williams’ reference to rape (the post-mortem on Shana’s body ruled out rape and showed no evidence of sexual assault).

But more bizarre was that Ryan made the call at all.

It was a clumsy move compared to his otherwise deliberate attempts to save himself.

In fact, one could easily argue that every other decision Williams made since killing Shana has been a desperate act of self-preservation.

He hid the body. He hid her clothes.

He pretended to search for her as a member of the Volunteer Rescue Squad.

He called and texted her mobile phone while she was missing, knowing full well she wouldn’t answer.

He stopped co-operating with police and pleaded guilty to ensure he received a 25 per cent reduction on his sentence.

He told conflicting stories.

But justice saw through it.

TROUBLE finds trouble.

It’s a crime-solving philosophy applied worldwide every day.

Chasing a thief? Look for convicted thieves. Got a vandalism problem? Locate the local brat vandals.

Police spend a large chunk of their careers pursuing criminals they have previously caught and magistrates spend a lot of time jailing and bailing repeat offenders.

As a result, there is a faith and expectation in the law-abiding community that strife can be avoided with a little common sense: Stay away from trouble, and trouble will stay away from you.

So when a bubbly beauty therapist started a relationship with a handsome Corowa tradesman, no one could have seen the horrifying trouble that awaited her.

To most, including family and friends, Ryan Williams presented himself as the perfect catch for any young woman.

He won prestigious awards and was paraded before no less than Julia Gillard as the proud future of Australia – a true leader for tomorrow.

Even as the search for Shana continued, her mother, Margaret Willett, described Williams to a local reporter as “the type of boy you wouldn’t mind your daughter marrying”.

But two days later, Williams was pointing police to the spot where he had meticulously buried Shana’s strangled, beaten and naked body.

How did everybody get this boy so wrong? Why didn’t anybody see he was trouble?

Probably because you can’t see what’s hidden from you.

A snarling, winged demon reaches out from Williams’ back with clawed hands and vacant, glassy eyes.

The terrifying tattoo is a betrayal to the clean-cut, boy-next-door facade that many, including Shana, knew and trusted.

The menacing beast was kept hidden behind clothing but it lurked behind Williams every day.

In much the same way, so too did the demons of Ryan’s life.

Drugs, alcoholism, sex, secret babies – Williams concealed them all until his lies started to close in on him.

DEMONS aside, Ryan Williams was a high achiever and an impressive citizen.

First came school, and young Ryan was no child prodigy.

Although a keen sportsman (he was a decorated swimmer and martial arts exponent), it was clear in his days at Wangaratta’s Galen Catholic College that Williams was not scholastically elite.

His grades were average and his care-factor was not high.

But Williams was also a realist and so, despite being the son of a Yarrawonga school teacher, he had no qualms about making an early exit from school when the time was right.

He quit to become a tradesman after completing year 11 in 2004.

Diligently, Williams investigated all of his career options and it was during a TAFE short-course in welding that he fell in love with metal.

He took on a fitting and turning apprenticeship at the Uncle Tobys’ factory in Wahgunyah, close to home in Corowa.

It was at that factory where Ryan Williams grew wings and started to fly.

Highly regarded within the company for his “commitment, tenacity and creativity”, Uncle Tobys thrust Williams forward as a poster boy for its training programs.

His praises were sung at every opportunity until his first big break came in 2008 when he was named as North East Victoria’s apprentice of the year.

In Nestle’s quarterly magazine in the spring of 2008, Williams was hailed a “star recruit”.

“Ryan was chosen for the award because he goes the extra mile in everything he does,” the article read.

Williams went on to become the Victorian Apprentice of the Year and enjoyed a trip to Cairns for the national final.

But bigger honours were in store.

In the same year, Williams was one of 21 apprentices hand-picked from thousands of trainees Australia-wide to attend the federal government’s ‘Today’s Skills; Tomorrow’s Leaders’ forum in Canberra.

On that week-long junket Williams rubbed shoulders with senior government figures including the then deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Liberal opposition leader Dr Brendan Nelson.

His brilliant year culminated with a $1000 cheque and a medallion for winning the Australian Industry Group Training Services’ apprentice of the year award.

“I’m glad to see an award that recognises apprentice workers and all their hard work,” Williams humbly noted.

Not that he didn’t revel in his status within Uncle Tobys.

One former colleague noted that Williams had an air of cocky confidence about him.

“He could be quiet, but definitely not shy. He just sort of sat back and took everything in,” the former colleague said.

“He thought he was ‘it’.”

Young Ryan’s personal life appeared to be taking marvellous shape as well.

He had purchased a property, a brick house at the Dairy Lagoon end of Hume Street in Corowa that he shared with his father, Graham Williams, who rented a room from his son.

Ryan also owned two cars, a white Ford Falcon and a silver Falcon ute.

Father and son reportedly shared a healthy relationship, but having dad under your roof every night is bound to cramp any young man’s style.

And so, Williams spent most nights at the home of Emily Kerr – colleague, amateur model and girlfriend.

Ryan and Emily were an item for seven or eight months and Ryan’s mother, Ann McGeehan, would later tell the Supreme Court that Ryan was “really serious about her”.

But mum didn’t know just how serious the relationship was.

Unbeknown to her, Emily had become pregnant with Ryan’s child.

It is not known why Ryan kept Emily’s pregnancy from his family, nor is it known why he also kept the birth of his first child to another woman, several months earlier, a secret.

What is known is that the first child was born one month premature and died in intensive care two weeks later.

The second child, to Emily, was miscarried in the days leading up to Shana Wilkinson’s murder.

It was around this time, the Supreme Court heard, that Williams started drinking heavily.

Ryan, like many young adults, was not new to binge drinking – he would regularly drink himself drunk at local shed parties and was a known cannabis user – but this most recent grog splurge, the Supreme Court heard, was more akin to a several-day bender of beer and spirits.

All the while, Ryan kept the miscarriage, his mourning and his drinking hidden from family and friends.

But his biggest and most dangerous secret was the one he kept from Emily.

That secret was Shana.

SHANA Wilkinson was an effervescent 20-year-old from a large and loving family.

A social butterfly who loved to party, she was six months into a beautician course when she was killed.

As a child she dreamed of becoming a vet.

“She loved animals,” her father David Wilkinson says. “She was always carrying around a rabbit or something with her.”

Just like dad, Shana was at home on the Murray River, where she regularly met friends and relished the rare moments when Mr Wilkinson allowed her to steer his boat.

She was also a bookworm, often staying up late reading, only to sleep-in and often rushing late to get to school.

Court heard Shana and Ryan Williams hadn’t had an official relationship since they were teenagers, but they certainly had history.

Details about their relationship are scant but telling.

Det. Sgt Stares said that on the night of Shana’s disappearance on September 18, 2009, her and Williams exchanged several friendly, playful text messages.

“That’s the sort of stuff they did all the time – flirt with each other, get together and whatever,” Det. Sgt Stares tells, adding that the two had probably had sex “numerous times” in the past.

Shana’s father describes the relationship more explicitly.

“(Williams) had a girlfriend and, from my view of it, if he wanted a quickie or some on the side he would go and pick Shana up,” Mr Wilkinson tells.

Despite all this, Ryan would later tell his psychiatrist their relationship leading up to that fateful night was purely platonic.

To understand the dynamics of the relationship, it is interesting to note the different roles each mother played.

Margaret Willett, Shana’s mother, knew Ryan quite well – or at least thought she did.

Ms Willett regularly welcomed him into her home and was close enough to Williams to call him when Shana went missing

Ms McGeehan, on the other hand, knew very little about Shana.

After Shana first visited Ryan at his mother’s house, Ms McGeehan asked Ryan: “Who’s that and what’s she want?”

To this, Ms McGeehan told the court that Ryan replied: “She watches me do jobs in the shed.”

Ms McGeehan hardly heard of Shana again.

Whatever the extent of their relationship, evidence suggests that Shana wanted the flame to intensify.

“Shana wanted more,” her father says. “I think she was a bit emotionally attached to him.”

But Ryan’s heart, and his reputation, lay elsewhere.

Suddenly our young Lothario had a big problem on his hands.

RYAN strangled Shana in what he later told police “started as a joke”.

But he couldn’t stop squeezing.

Williams had Shana in a headlock from behind and when she passed out he thought she was dead. Medical reports showed that she wasn’t.

What killed Shana was six heavy blows to the back of her head with the blade of a shovel, which Williams had swung like an axe, splitting her skull.

Williams later told police he attacked Shana with the shovel “just to make sure”.

Then came that awful question: What do you do with a dead body?

Exactly when Shana was buried remains unclear – police have no way of knowing if it happened before or after that bizarre late-night phone call.

Either way, Shana was eventually buried at Dairy Lagoon, a Murray River wetland a few kilometres from Williams’ house near the golf course.

The burial was scrupulous: He stripped both Shana and himself of their bloodied clothing and hid them in the roof of his house.

He then buried Shana face-down in a grave over half a metre deep and covered the area with sandy loam.

The Dairy Lagoon grave was so well concealed that police admit they may never have found Shana’s body if Williams had not led them to the site.

In fact, police did not even have Williams hook, line and sinker when he was eventually cornered into a shock admission on Thursday, September 24.

But that was four days after the search for Shana had begun when the 20-year-old had not turned up for work at Target Country in Corowa on Sunday morning.

Shana’s mother had not seen her daughter since retiring to bed Friday night, and Shana’s non-arrival to work was what escalated her concern.

She started ringing Shana’s friends, including Ryan Williams.

Williams told Margaret Willett the same story he would later tell police and anyone else who asked: He had picked Shana up Friday night and dropped her off with a bottle of wine on the corner of Federation Avenue and Edward Street.

Although a lie, the tale he spun provided police with another reason to suspect Williams. Situated on the corner of Federation Avenue and Edward Street is the town’s VRA headquarters, where Ryan had been a member for 18 months.

Therein lied the clue: Seasoned detectives say that when criminals invent stories they call on familiar locations because they are easier for them to recount.

This point was not lost on Albury police.

Det. Sgt Stares said the tip-off about the late-night phone call and holes in Williams’ story made him a suspect: “His story was a bit strange … it was odd,” he said.

But with no body, no evidence and uncertainty about whether Shana was even dead, the police had to keep fishing.

While police continued their investigations, the search for Shana went on.

When her mobile phone lost signal on the Monday night, extra reinforcements were called in.

Dozens of police, firefighters, SES and VRA volunteers from both sides of the Border scoured the region on foot and from air.

When there was still no sign, expert divers were called in to search the Murray River.

Among those searching was none other than Ryan Williams.

One female reporter covering the search noticed the clean-cut Williams at a lunchtime barbecue and commented: “Gee, there’s some good-lookers in the Corowa VRA”.

Williams cut a casual figure, and why wouldn’t he? He knew where Shana was and it wasn’t where everyone was looking.

Meanwhile, by Thursday, with suspicion mounting, police decided to seize Williams’ car.

This was nothing unusual – Williams had already admitted Shana had been in his sedan – so when Det. Sgt Stares and a homicide squad partner drove to Ryan’s Hume Street home that Thursday they were expecting it to be a fairly rudimentary visit.

Graham Williams, Ryan’s father, changed all that.

As soon as the police declared they had a warrant to seize Ryan’s white 1995 sedan, Graham Williams’ manner changed.

The reason? Dad knew what police didn’t: Ryan had been driving his ute on the night of Shana’s disappearance, not the sedan.

Father dragged son away for a private discussion and when Ryan returned he approached Det Sgt Stares and said: “They’re taking the wrong car – I wasn’t in that car”.

While the tow-truck operators turned their attention to the ute, Ryan and Graham started another, more panicked conversation.

When the pair had finished, Ryan walked back to the detectives and calmly admitted to killing Shana.

Det. Sgt Stares said Graham Williams was clearly in shock.

“I don’t think he could believe what was happening that afternoon,” he remembers.

“Nor could we, to a degree – everything happened so fast.

“We were there to seize Ryan’s car and the next minute he was in the back of the truck showing us a body.”

But Ryan Williams remained composed.

“He was nervous … but he never broke down and cried,” Stares said.

“He never said he was sorry or that he regretted it.

“I still feel that he felt more sorry for himself than (for) what he had done.”

Williams led police to Shana’s body and, while sharing a cigarette with Det. Sgt Stares, imparted important facts about his horrific crime: the location of Shana’s clothing, the use of shovels and Shana’s alleged desire to rekindle their relationship.

But then he threw another curveball that police did not see coming.

After arresting Williams, experience told the detectives that the hard part was over – surely the kid would spill his guts now?

Not Ryan.

Almost two years since that cigarette, Williams has still refused to reveal anything else about his horrific crime, frustrating police and robbing Shana’s family of much-wanted answers.

“He was pretty co-operative (during the cigarette) – he was talking – and that’s why I was so angry and disappointed that he didn’t go on,” Det. Sgt Stares says.

“I’ve done this job a long time and I really thought he (would keep talking) … but he’s done this complete backflip.

“You get it with really seasoned crooks … but not Ryan, I didn’t think he’d do it because was such a cleanskin.”

The only time Williams really opened up thereafter was during psychiatric assessments after his guilty plea.

But those interviews provided more questions than answers - his story was changing.

He originally told police the argument started over Shana’s desire to rekindle their relationship, but now he was claiming Shana provoked him with insensitive comments about his miscarriage a week earlier.

Williams told the psychiatrist he “snapped” and was in a “blind rage” when Shana allegedly said the miscarriage was “a good thing”.

These conflictions and inconsistencies eventually played against him.

In handing down a minimum 16-year sentence, Justice Monika Schmidt yesterday said that because Ryan chose not to give evidence in court, his claims could not be tested or proven.

His stories were largely dismissed.

SHANA’S father, David Wilkinson, holds no grudge against Ryan’s parents – “It’s not their fault – they’re by-standers as much as we are,” he says.

Instead, every ounce of his anger and hate is vehemently directed at Williams, who Mr Wilkinson wants dead.

“I’d like to see him get life and swing on the end of a rope,” David said in the lead-up to the sentencing.

“I think our justice system badly needs looking at.

“He’s taken Shana’s life and he should lose his.

“If you go to jail, you still get your little privileges like a television, you can exercise.

“Meanwhile, we’ll never get to see Shana again.

“We go out to her grave and sit on the grass and talk to her, but she doesn’t answer back and you can’t feel the warmth of her hand.

“She’s gone.”

The only farewell Shana’s parents were afforded was at the funeral home, where they saw their daughter for the last time.

“I saw all the bruising and all that on her, and that image came back to me night after night,” David tells.

“You see images in your mind of him doing stuff to Shana and putting her where she ended up.

“It’s very hard to get used to.”

David still only sleeps about two hours each day, often lying awake asking questions that only Williams can answer.

“You want to ask him ‘why?’

“Why didn’t he just stop or just kick her out of the car? Why didn’t he just walk away from the argument?”

David is resigned to never knowing what happened and Shana’s mother, Margaret Willett, has said she will never understand.

But Stares hasn’t given up hope of finding the truth.

He plans to visit Williams in jail in search of answers.

“When all this is over I want to go and see him and just ask him to fill in a few little blank spots,” he says.

“Professionally, those little questions do niggle at me, particularly the ‘Why?’.

“But it’s not so much for me as much as for the family, mum and dad.

“He’s not going to get into any more trouble for what he’s done.”