The boyfriend of a Melbourne mum found with horrific and fatal stab injuries in her city apartment has been found guilty of her murder.
Ellie Price's body was discovered in the bedroom of her South Melbourne home on May 4, 2020 but prosecutors argued Ricardo Barbaro killed her in the early hours of April 29 that year.
Police carried out a welfare check on the 26-year-old mother of one, finding her with plunging stab wounds and a cut to her neck, after she failed to answer calls from family interstate.
Barbaro, who fled and was arrested in NSW, will face a pre-sentence hearing in October before being sentenced by Justice Lex Lasry.
Jurors took just over a day to return the verdict against Barbaro, 36.
His barrister Rishi Nathwani had presented the case as a whodunnit, claiming it was not the boyfriend but instead Ms Price's wealthy benefactor - brothel owner Mark Gray - who had killed her.
Jurors heard Mr Gray paid for Ms Price's apartment, car, clothes and a weekly allowance but before her death she had attempted to extort $100,000 from him under threat of a false rape allegation.
Mr Gray told the Victorian Supreme Court murder trial that he didn't expect anything in exchange for all he gave Ms Price, but that was challenged by Mr Nathwani.
"Imagine getting all that given to you and going to find somebody else," he read from texts Mr Gray sent to Ms Price’s sister Danielle after her death.
"At the end of the day she was replacing me with this guy … I was always the bridesmaid and never the bride."
He said it was Mr Gray who had the motive to kill Ms Price, and it was telling that prosecutors had presented no motive for Barbaro.
But prosecutor Damien Hannan pointed to Barbaro's post-offence conduct, including fleeing interstate when Ms Price's death was first reported in the news on May 5.
He said the relationship between Ms Price and Barbaro had been acrimonious and included past physical assaults, and told jurors it was believed Barbaro killed her after an argument in the early hours of April 29.
About 4.30am he left her apartment in her car, which was later found on a rural property at Diggers Rest.
After leaving Victoria, Barbaro first travelled to Canberra and then to NSW where he was arrested after a multi-day manhunt on May 14.
Mr Hannan had suggested presenting Mr Gray as an alternative suspect was "ridiculous", and directed jurors to consider evidence of Barbaro's blood under Ms Price's fingernails and a fingerprint and blood smear on her bedroom mirror.
He also had an injury to his arm, which Mr Hannan told jurors was believed to be the result of Ms Price scratching him while trying to defend herself.
Ms Price's mother Tracey Gangell and sister Danielle Price, who live in Tasmania, were both in court throughout the trial.
Each gave evidence against Barbaro.
The verdict came in the third trial Barbaro faced.
The first trial was abandoned when Justice Lasry learned a juror had conducted their own research into the case, against his express instructions and the law.
He referred that juror's conduct to the Office of Public Prosecutions.
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