Family of Irma Palasics await murder trial after long journey to arrest

But it will take a close-knit family to see it through formal murder hearings ahead.

Liz Mikita, whose mother Irma was bound, gagged and brutally murdered in her home in 1999, acknowledged that not just the police, but equally the support of the Canberra community and media that had kept the cold case alive down through the years.

"Thank you and the whole community for being there for us," she said to the media gathering, after police announced the arrest of Melbourne man Steve Fabriczy over the murder of Irma Palasics.

It has been a long, rocky and emotion-charged journey for the family - "the dull ache that never goes away", as Ms Mikita described it - since that awful night of November 6, 1999, when two men broke into the home of the elderly Palasics couple, bound them with cable ties and brutally bashed them over several hours to force them to reveal where they had secreted their valuables.

The house had been burgled twice before in the previous two years. Whether these were the same offenders who returned in 1999 with a far more brutal intent, is not yet clear.

There were numerous leads for police to chase early, including a light-coloured sedan with a loud muffler and a faulty headlight seen by a witness leaving after one of the previous burglaries, a Reebok shoeprint at the murder scene, and smatterings of DNA evidence.

John Mikita, the grandson of Irma and Gregor Palasics, had a "gut feeling" early the killers were still in the ACT community. He had been 25 when the police knocked on his door to tell him of the bloody home invasion which had taken his grandmother's life.

He said his grandfather, Gregor, physically recovered but was never the same after losing his beloved wife that night. Gregor Palasics survived until 2004 yet "everything that he knew was ripped from him", Mr Mikita said.

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Hard-working detective Jarryd Dunbar had been the police victim liaison officer, and diligently kept the family regularly updated on case developments. 60 Minutes revisited the case in 2014, which generated a quick flood of phone calls but no fresh leads.

On the 15^th anniversary of the case, John Mikita's will to seek justice for his family sent him driving around Canberra, putting up more than 600 posters with his grandmother's photo and a plea for the public's help. Yet as the years ticked on, the doubts crept in.

"We did as a family begin to think we would never get closure," he said.

"So this is a very good day for us."

When Detective Dunbar was posted off to the Sydney office of the federal police in 2016 and the limited resources of the small ACT homicide team resources were drawn off to other matters, such as the Ainslie machete murder of Eden Waugh, the family suddenly felt disconnected. The updates no longer kept coming.

For a time, gaping holes were exposed in the investigative ranks to the extent that the family wrote an open letter to Police Minister Mick Gentleman, "nauseated and abjectly disappointed by the inaction".

When Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan arrived as Chief Police Officer in 2020, his rank brought with it the clout to assign fresh resources and prioritise technical help out of the AFP Forensics HQ at Majura, which had acquired some fresh familial DNA techniques. He ordered a review of the case, which Detective Inspector Scott Moller said "highlighted some investigative opportunities".

Suddenly the wheels began turning again.

"My grandparents didn't deserve what happened to them that night," John Mikita said.

"Not only was my grandmother Irma murdered but my grandfather's life was ended and ours have never been the same. We now ask that our family be given the privacy to process this major milestone and we encourage anybody if you have further information as to my grandmother's murder to please call Crime Stoppers."

Ahead for the family is a potentially long and tortuous ACT Supreme Court murder trial, the outcome unknown. But after 23 years of waiting, Liz Mikita intends to be in court to see it through to the end.

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