A man has pleaded guilty to drugging a Victorian mother before tying her up, burning her alive and driving over her with his car.
Michael Cardamone, 50, on Friday pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to murdering Whorouly mother Karen Chetcuti Verbunt in January last year.
He also pleaded guilty to trying to hire a hitman - who turned out to be a covert operative - to murder Edward George, a man Cardamone had initially tried to blame for the murder.
Cardamone killed Ms Chetcuti Verbunt, a mother of two, after sedating her with an animal tranquilliser and tying her wrists with cable ties, duct tape and rope.
Cardamone had originally pleaded not guilty to Ms Chetcuti-Verbunt's murder, and during a committal hearing at Wangaratta Magistrates Court in March claimed police had the wrong man.
Crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert QC told that committal hearing that Cardamone went to Ms Chetcuti-Verbunt's house about 9.20 on the morning of January 12, 2016.
The pair became neighbours after Cardamone moved to the tiny north-east town of Whorouly in 2015 after finishing a nine-year jail sentence for rape.
Cardamone drugged Ms Chetcuti-Verbunt with an animal tranquilliser. Then he bound and gagged her, before fracturing her skull and using petrol to set her alight.
Forensic evidence was presented to court that she was alive at the time.
After she was dead Cardamone injected her with battery acid and ran over her body with his car as part of a plot to cover up the murder.
Her body, with duct tape wrapped around her neck, was eventually found in scrub land near Lake Buffalo, five days later.
Cardamone and his mother Maria, 78, were also charged with incitement to commit murder after trying to hire a hitman to kill key prosecution witness Edward George.
Cardamone allegedly called his mother from jail and they hatched the plot over the phone - but police were listening in.
An undercover operative posing as a hitman agreed to kill Mr George for $25,000, to be paid over two instalments. Cardamone pleaded guilty to that charge on Friday.
Cardamone and Mr George were together when Ms Chetcuti-Verbunt's red Citroen was torched.
Mr George told the court he thought the car was set alight to settle a disagreement with a drug dealer. Cardamone later told police Mr George was responsible for the murder.
After a long police chase that ended in Ringwood, Cardamone was arrested on January 17 last year, five days after Ms Chetcuti-Verbunt was killed.
Cardamone was arrested after he phoned relatives claiming he had been kidnapped. He told them he was trapped in the boot of a moving car.
With AAP.