60 Minutes: Feb 16

On 60 Minutes Sarah Ristevski, whose father Borce killed her mother in 2016, speaks with Liz Hayes about why she has supported him.

Australians have no sympathy for Borce Ristevski. He’s one of the most despised men in the country. In June 2016 he killed his wife of 27 years, Karen, and callously dumped her body in bushland outside Melbourne. But for three years he tried to dupe everyone, the police and the public, into believing he had nothing to do with the crime. He wanted us to think he was as shocked as anyone by Karen’s sudden disappearance from the family home, and grief-stricken when her remains were found in February 2017.

However, there was always something less than convincing about his sorrow and it inevitably led to whispers of suspicion, which as time went on grew and grew. Last year Borce Ristevski finally admitted he was a killer. To avoid a murder trial he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his wife. But this story doesn’t end with Ristevski’s imprisonment because another life has also been destroyed. Sarah Ristevski is the couple’s only child. Until this terrible ordeal she treasured her idyllic upbringing, but now she’s confronting an agonising dilemma: how to make sense of the fact the mother she loved was killed by the father she loved – and still loves! 24-year-old Sarah had never spoken publicly about her parents until she sat down with Liz Hayes for the most extraordinary and emotional interview of 2020.

Reporter: Liz Hayes
Producers: Stefanie Sgroi, Naomi Shivaraman

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.