The official confirmation that human remains found in bushland at Mount Macedon are those of missing mother Karen Ristevski is a breakthrough in the baffling case, but it does not provide all the answers.
Police have now identified her body and perhaps know where she died, but they don't know why or how.
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Karen Ristevski case: where to now?
The Age's crime writer John Silvester talks about the fate of Melbourne mother Karen Ristevski, who disappeared seven months ago.
The identification of the body was quick due to DNA testing. Police will be hoping technology will also help with the next question: how.
For it will be through a difficult autopsy on a badly decomposed body that they will hope to find a cause of death.
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Shortly after Mrs Ristevski disappeared from her Avondale Heights home on June 29 last year, the case became a suspicious missing persons one.
Quickly police realised they would not find her alive.
Her husband Borce said she left the house after an argument to go for a walk to clear her head.
Suggestions by relatives that she may have bought a false passport and fled overseas were clearly nonsense.
One of the key concerns for police was that her telephone pinged off mobile phone towers on the Calder Freeway near Gisborne on the day she disappeared.
They could find no reason why she would have voluntarily gone to the area.
Much later, Mr Ristevski told police he had driven his wife's 2004 Mercedes some distance that day because it had a faulty fuel gauge and he hoped jolting it over bumps may fix the problems.
For some reason he did not mention this to police for months until he was told about the phone pinging.
The body in Mount Macedon was found on a dirt track not far from the Calder Freeway – the very road where his phone was electronically recorded.
Police conducted a series of searches in different suburban and country areas looking for the body but the remains, wedged between two fallen trees, were found on Monday by a bushwalker.
Homicide detectives say there will nearly always be a link between where a body is left and the killer.
It may be an old fishing spot, a holiday area or a relative's property, but under stress people crave the familiar.
They look for an area they know is isolated and where they hope the body will remain undisturbed.
The 2002 so called Society Murders are a perfect example. When Matthew Wales-King killed his mother, Margaret, and stepfather Paul he buried the bodies off a Marysville track.
For some time police couldn't see the link until they saw there was a camp site used by a private school just across the road – the same school where Matthew Wales-King had been a student.
Often, police say the killer will put a body in the boot and drive along a major road or freeway, usually less than 100 kilometres from Melbourne.
The aim will be to return home before the killer (or the victim) are found to be missing.
They will leave the main road and head for a dirt track, where they can drag the body a short distance into the bush.
Karen Ristevski's body was found about 50 metres from such a track.
Seven months after she disappeared police have the breakthrough they needed. And while the case is far from over, the killer knows investigators are now closer to the truth.