Australia - Karen Rae, 48, found slain near Melbourne highway, 15 April 2015 *Arrest*

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Makara

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Man charged with murder of missing Melbourne mother Karen Rae

2:12pm December 11, 2016

A 49-year old man has been charged with murdering missing Melbourne mother Karen Rae after human remains were found in bushland beside the Frankston Freeway, in Melbourne's south-east.

Tony John Smith, 49, appeared briefly in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court today and was charged with murdering Ms Rae on April 15 last year.
 
JLZ said:
That went cold quickly then.
Click to expand...

Yes JLZ. A little over 18 months from Karen Rae's murder to her body being found and her murder was a cold case? I guess police ran out of leads...until now.

Meanwhile, Karen Ristevski (and Sarah MacDiarmid, among many others) are still missing.
 
Bohemian said:
Yes JLZ. A little over 18 months from Karen Rae's murder to her body being found and her murder was a cold case? I guess police ran out of leads...until now.

Meanwhile, Karen Ristevski (and Sarah MacDiarmid, among many others) are still missing.
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http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/m...n-north-mother-karen-rae-20161211-gt8nyp.html
The hunt for the missing mother was handed to cold case missing person squad detectives in May last year.
It seems it was only classified as a missing persons case and was relegated to cold almost immediately.
 
JLZ said:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/m...n-north-mother-karen-rae-20161211-gt8nyp.html
The hunt for the missing mother was handed to cold case missing person squad detectives in May last year.
It seems it was only classified as a missing persons case and was relegated to cold almost immediately.
Click to expand...

Worth having a nose around to find out why Karen Rae's case was relegated to a cold case so quickly, given this tidbit of information from the link you posted, JLZ:

'At the time of Ms Rae's disappearance, police would neither rule out foul play, nor the possibility that the woman, believed to be a mother-of-four, did not want to be found.'​


That makes me even more curious about what VICPOL know about Karen Ristevski's disappearance that her case hasn't been similarly relegated.
 
One of the children was a ten-year-old son. She did not access her bank accounts or use her phone after she went missing. She was last seen leaving home with a man driving a dark blue Commodore.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...e/news-story/fa5c30e0f50333249a10132fded85be6

She does seem to have been treated as a less-important-victim. One of the published pictures looked like a mugshot. Criminal record?
 
Thanks to somebody for the new thread.

In the missing person poster, "a man named Tony Smith" was identified as the driver of the dark Commodore. But all the reports say that Karen was last seen driving away with him. So was he not located and interviewed, until now? Because if he was in the car with Karen, he must have seen her after that "last" sighting at her home.

https://www.facebook.com/Karen-Rae-Missing-Person-Frankston-452780511591452/
 
JLZ said:
Thanks to somebody for the new thread.

In the missing person poster, "a man named Tony Smith" was identified as the driver of the dark Commodore. But all the reports say that Karen was last seen driving away with him. So was he not located and interviewed, until now? Because if he was in the car with Karen, he must have seen her after that "last" sighting at her home.

https://www.facebook.com/Karen-Rae-Missing-Person-Frankston-452780511591452/
Click to expand...

That somebody would be Makara (and/or a Mod). Thanks for starting a thread for Karen Rae and moving the posts. Good thinking 99. I was getting worried that the discussion of her remains being found would be confusing for posters on the other thread.

As for Jones, maybe he had a false alibi or was able to 'distance' himself from her disappearance at the time. The old, 'I dropped her off at/walked her to/she went for a walk', soft shoe shuffle. Either he's 'fessed up or blabbed and someone's dropped him in it. How ever this turn of events came to be, I hope justice will be served in the not too distant future for Karen and her son.
 
The heart attack symptoms look like panicking. I suspect he was being monitored to see what he'd do when the search location was publicized but not the name of the victim. I even wonder whether the remains were found there before the search, and then the road blocked off and the search staged, to see if he responded to the pressure.

There had been a photofit or artist's sketch released of the man last seen with Karen. So it seems Tony Smith didn't come forward and wasn't able to be found in the first instance.
 
JLZ said:
The heart attack symptoms look like panicking. I suspect he was being monitored to see what he'd do when the search location was publicized but not the name of the victim. I even wonder whether the remains were found there before the search, and then the road blocked off and the search staged, to see if he responded to the pressure.

There had been a photofit or artist's sketch released of the man last seen with Karen. So it seems Tony Smith didn't come forward and wasn't able to be found in the first instance.
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Shades of Tiahleigh Palmer's alleged murderer. I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall and watch (and/or listen to) him sweat.

I didn't know about the identikit/artist's impression. Funny how often these 'innocent parties' vanish into thin air. Another POI did the same thing when he was named at Gordana Kotevski's inquest. They all seem to end up in the Top End for some strange reason.
 
Bohemian said:
Shades of Tiahleigh Palmer's alleged murderer. I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall and watch (and/or listen to) him sweat.

I didn't know about the identikit/artist's impression. Funny how often these 'innocent parties' vanish into thin air. Another POI did the same thing when he was named at Gordana Kotevski's inquest. They all seem to end up in the Top End for some strange reason.
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Sorry, I just checked and the sketch was of a person with whom she was possibly seen the day after her disappearance. So presumably not the accused.

However, if the accused had come forward, why wouldn't his trip with Karen have been reported as the last sighting? Instead the last definite sighting was by the person who saw them drive away together.

It's also possible that the poster represents what family/friends thought but was uncertain as far as LE were concerned. That the poster-makers believed she was driven off by TS, but when interviewed he denied it.
 
JLZ said:
Sorry, I just checked and the sketch was of a person with whom she was possibly seen the day after her disappearance. So presumably not the accused.

However, if the accused had come forward, why wouldn't his trip with Karen have been reported as the last sighting? Instead the last definite sighting was by the person who saw them drive away together.

It's also possible that the poster represents what family/friends thought but was uncertain as far as LE were concerned. That the poster-makers believed she was driven off by TS, but when interviewed he denied it.
Click to expand...

I only saw Karen's missing posters with her photo on them on the FB page stating 'Investigators had been told she'd left home in the company of [the accused] [...] and drove away in a black Commodore station wagon.'. Have the artist's impression and accompanying comment been deleted?

The page was only has posts/photos from 19 January this year, after Karen had been missing for 9 months.

As for TS coming forward, I meant recently. I wonder if someone did some sleuthing of their own, discovered it was actually the accused who was with Karen last and the pressure started to build after VICPOL was tipped off?

Could the subsequent sighting be due to someone being mistaken or for more nefarious reasons?
__________

I hope I understood/answered your questions adequately, JLZ. Please excuse me 'if my place is all over the head' . I strongly suspect my brain has clocked off early for the holidays.

I confused the accused's surname of 'Smith' with 'Jones', the surname of a POI on WT's thread. I also neglected to add an 's' to 'son' in one of my posts. Karen has 4 children in total; all boys I believe. Sheesh!
 
The sketch wasn't in the poster. It's in this article, for example. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/m...for-families-left-behind-20150730-ginxa6.html

The caption says the sketch is of a man seen in a car with Karen, but the text says it's of a man seen with her the day after her disappearance. I don't know whether that means that the sketch is of a man seen with someone looking like Karen in a car on 16 April (who would be irrelevant if as alleged Karen died on 15 April), or that there are two sketches, one of the man in the car (Smith) on 15 April (shown), and another of a man supposedly seen with Karen on 16 April (not shown). Or, maybe the paper is being careless, and doesn't know what it means.

When I went on with "However, if the accused had come forward . . ." I wasn't replying to your thought that Smith had possibly confessed. I meant that even if Smith wasn't the man in the picture, there's still a reason to think that he hadn't made himself known to police at a reasonably early time. I would have thought that if Smith had been interviewed back then, his version would have been out there. It doesn't matter that he would have tried to distance himself--he'd still be the last person known to have seen her and his account of the parting should have been in the story of Karen's disappearance.

Smith; Jones; Tonys. I get it.
 
JLZ said:
The sketch wasn't in the poster. It's in this article, for example. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/m...for-families-left-behind-20150730-ginxa6.html

The caption says the sketch is of a man seen in a car with Karen, but the text says it's of a man seen with her the day after her disappearance. I don't know whether that means that the sketch is of a man seen with someone looking like Karen in a car on 16 April (who would be irrelevant if as alleged Karen died on 15 April), or that there are two sketches, one of the man in the car (Smith) on 15 April (shown), and another of a man supposedly seen with Karen on 16 April (not shown). Or, maybe the paper is being careless, and doesn't know what it means.

When I went on with "However, if the accused had come forward . . ." I wasn't replying to your thought that Smith had possibly confessed. I meant that even if Smith wasn't the man in the picture, there's still a reason to think that he hadn't made himself known to police at a reasonably early time. I would have thought that if Smith had been interviewed back then, his version would have been out there. It doesn't matter that he would have tried to distance himself--he'd still be the last person known to have seen her and his account of the parting should have been in the story of Karen's disappearance.

Smith; Jones; Tonys. I get it.
Click to expand...

I understand, JLZ, but it's all academic now that police have charged the accused and have him in custody.

How investigations are actually conducted and which information police allow to be published in MSM are often, if not always, two very different things as we have evidenced on other threads.

Let's see how events pan out at trial and if the defence calls a witness to say they saw Karen with a man other than the accused after she went missing.
 
It's pleasant to dwell on a solved case, after the frustrating ones.

Apart from that, I was thinking about whether the case had been under-investigated, and if so whether it was due to devaluation of the victim--for example because of where she lived, or whether there were simply fewer leads to follow than in say the Ristevski case.
 
JLZ said:
It's pleasant to dwell on a solved case, after the frustrating ones.

Apart from that, I was thinking about whether the case had been under-investigated, and if so whether it was due to devaluation of the victim--for example because of where she lived, or whether there were simply fewer leads to follow than in say the Ristevski case.
Click to expand...

It normally is, JLZ, but i suspect I'm fatigued. There have been far too many difficult and/or unsolved cases come to light during the past year or so that I've been posting on WS, including those of missing, presumably murdered and/or brutalised children. Not to mention at least one accused who was able to walk away from the alleged murder/manslaughter of a young woman simply due to legal and judicial technicalities IMO.

I similarly wonder about the 'status' of victims. A lot of the threads I start are for people who have gone missing and/or have been brutalised and murdered and then seemingly forgotten.

It seems to me if there isn't grass roots and media support for a missing person, even if their disappearance is thought to be a suspected murder, often the case 'goes cold' quite quickly. My kindest guess is that it may be that Missing Persons, Homicide and Unsolved Homicide Squads suffer from a lack of resources rather than prioritising their cases based on socioeconomic or any other status.
 
JLZ said:
The heart attack symptoms look like panicking. I suspect he was being monitored to see what he'd do when the search location was publicized but not the name of the victim. I even wonder whether the remains were found there before the search, and then the road blocked off and the search staged, to see if he responded to the pressure.

There had been a photofit or artist's sketch released of the man last seen with Karen. So it seems Tony Smith didn't come forward and wasn't able to be found in the first instance.
Click to expand...

He was on site with detectives during the search, there's a video showing him there (a friend and I freaked out as we knew smith through friends when we were teens), from memory at least one of his parents was in the police force, not sure what as though.

Frankston north has always been a fairly rough area, lots of public housing and much is now privately owned.
 
'I'm going to do to you what I did to her': Terrifying words of a man accused of murder as he 'confessed to woman who prostituted herself to him for ice after violent sexual activity'
By Australian Associated Press and Kirby Spencer For Daily Mail Australia
01:44 +10:00 13 Sep 2017, updated 01:44 +10:00 13 Sep 2017

  • 'A Melbourne man allegedly admitted to two people that he murdered a woman
    [*]Tony John Smith is facing court charged with the death of Karen Rae, 48
    [*]One witness told court that Smith had admitted to her he killed Ms Rae
    [*]While another was bashed by Smith as he told her she would suffer the same fate'

Read more at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4876510/Man-accused-murder-confessed-two-woman.html
 
JLZ said:
It's pleasant to dwell on a solved case, after the frustrating ones.

Apart from that, I was thinking about whether the case had been under-investigated, and if so whether it was due to devaluation of the victim--for example because of where she lived, or whether there were simply fewer leads to follow than in say the Ristevski case.
Click to expand...

It would seem that there was plenty going on in the background of the investigation. The Mr Big sting was used to locate Karen’s body.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/la...e/news-story/4708d609136ded9978304103ea5fd014
 
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