Ricardo Barbaro: Convicted Murderer
After a month-long trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria, the boyfriend of a woman whose body was discovered with multiple stab wounds inside her flat in South Melbourne has been convicted guilty of her murder.
In May of 2020, Ellie Price, who was 26 years old, was discovered dead in her South Melbourne flat with a significant cut to her neck.
Ricardo Barbaro, 36, was found guilty by a jury on Friday after they deliberated for two days on the case.
The prosecution is trying to put Barbaro on trial for the third time, and this time they actually want to succeed. After it was discovered that a member of the jury had investigated the case in violation of the directions given to them, the first trial was thrown out.
The defense was able to collect new evidence from the mobile phone of the witness for the prosecution, Mark Gray, which led to the abandonment of the second trial.
After the verdict was announced, Barbaro paused for a while, closed his eyes momentarily, and took a drink of water. The family members, including Price’s mother, sister, and other relatives, comforted and consoled each other while crying.
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The jury had been informed that Barbaro, who was the last person to have spoken to Price, was seen leaving in a $100,000 white Mercedes-Benz that was caught on surveillance footage.
Barbaro spent the night with a family friend after traveling to Williamstown to visit his father.
He parked the unusual vehicle at a rural site in Diggers Rest, rented a van, and then travelled to NSW, where he was apprehended on May 13, 2020.
Barbaro had wounds on his hands and arm, according to CCTV footage shown to the jury.
A Web of Complex Relationships
The prosecution said that Barbaro and Price had a turbulent relationship that was tainted by jealousy. Barbaro denied the murder charge.
But it became clear during the trial that Price was dating someone else.
The Price family’s close friend Mark Gray, 60, ran a successful brothel empire and had long supported Price’s way of life.
This includes paying for the young woman’s car, rent, and a $2,000 weekly stipend.
Blackmail and Dark Allegations
In court, it was also revealed that Price had tried to blackmail Grey into giving him $100,000 in exchange for keeping quiet about his rape allegations in the days preceding her death.
Barbaro’s attorneys cited texts he sent to Price’s family after her murder that suggested he had contacts in the underworld and was concerned claims that he had paid someone to kill the 26-year-old could be brought up in court.
In those communications, Grey claimed to have used some “very bad” men he knew to help him with work-related issues. He claimed that illegal motorbike gangs frequently employed those males.
They’ll likely say that I hired a hitman to murder Ellie, he wrote.
Gray denied killing Price while serving as a witness and claimed he only kept in touch with her family in Tasmania because he was grieving.
However, Gray had long-held feelings for Price, according to messages found on his phone, according to defence attorney Rishi Nathwani, and he felt Barbaro had displaced him.
He wrote, “Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.”
Gray was never put on trial in relation to Price’s passing.
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Source: The Age