Maria Korp was found barely alive in a car boot 20 years ago. Narelle can still remember the smell.

It was February 13th, 2005, and then-detective Narelle Fraser could smell death.

She was walking towards the car of missing woman, Maria Korp, after a security guard noticed her red Mazda 626 parked near Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance in the early hours of the morning.

"From about 80 metres away we could smell something emanating from the car. It was pungent — it was really strong," Fraser told Mamamia's True Crime Conversations. 

Listen to Narelle Fraser on True Crime Conversations. Post continues below. 

It had been four days since anyone had seen the 50-year-old mother-of-two, with her husband Joe Korp telling police she hadn't turned up for work on Wednesday morning, and hadn't picked up their son Damian, 11, from school that afternoon.

From that very first call, police were suspicious.

"It's hard to explain, isn't it, but they just had this gut feeling that something wasn't right," said Fraser.

It was an analyst at the Victorian Missing Person's Unit that first said "I don't like this," she explained.

So Fraser and her colleagues from the unit were assigned to the case immediately; tracking down the last person who saw her, getting a proper statement Joe, and digging into her marriage, her friends and her colleagues.

During their chat with Joe, they asked if there was anyone he could think of that might've done something to Maria.

"He said, 'Well the only person I can think of is the lady that I had an affair with.' He put her under the bus the first opportunity he could get," said Fraser.

He insisted that they had a brief affair but that it had finished months ago, but a quick visit to Tania Herman's home and she had a very different story to tell.

"It was like chalk and cheese," Fraser told True Crime Conversations.

According to Tania, she and Joe were very much still together, he was paying her rent, and they were in the process of organising a commitment ceremony because they were "going to live happily ever after".

Their stories were starting to unravel as the call about Maria's car came through.

Finding Maria.

As Fraser and her colleagues gathered around Maria's missing car, they all assumed they were about to see a dead body.

"There was condensation on the inside windows, but we couldn't see anyone. So we assumed there was something or someone in the boot."

The smell told them that person was deceased.

"I will never forget that smell," said Fraser. "It was almost frightening, thinking oh my god, what's it going to be like? Because by this stage, the car had clearly been in the hot February sun for a couple of days."

When they opened the boot, a wave of stench washed over the eight detectives gathered, causing one to faint and one to vomit. But there — crumpled up in the foetal position at the very rear of the boot — was a woman.

Fraser remembers hearing someone declaring they had to check for signs of life, but by that stage she was already clambering in beside Maria, whose body was visibly decomposing.

"To see this woman, like a frightened little animal, all I wanted to do was get in there. She's somebody's mum, she's a human being — I didn't even think about it," she told True Crime Conversations.

Spooning Maria — whose clothes were dishevelled, and who had ligature marks on her neck — Fraser checked her wrists and her neck for a pulse. She couldn't feel one.

Maria Korp. Image: Victoria Police/AAP.

"I just wanted to check 110 per cent so somehow I manoeuvred myself so that I could see her chest. I put my head on her chest….it moved. I could not believe it.

"I just remember yelling 'Oh my god, she's alive! She's alive!"

Within minutes, an ambulance was there, and Fraser was bundled into it with a barely breathing Maria.

"I remember I just spoke to her. I said 'I don't know if you can hear me Maria, but you're safe now. Nobody will hurt you. I'm a policewoman. I'll stay with you.'"

Maria was suffering from oxygen starvation to the brain, severe dehydration as well as head and neck injuries, so doctors made the decision to place her in a medically induced coma.

She never regained consciousness, and eventually passed on August 5, 2005, after life-sustaining treatment was withdrawn.

Catching a killer.

Joe Korp gave Fraser the creeps.

"I found him to be a narcissist, a womaniser," said Fraser. "He thought he was God's gift to women," she told True Crime Conversations.

"But I can understand [why women liked him]. He dressed really well, he spoke nicely, he was chivalrous."

Once they had found Maria, they were confident he was somehow involved in her, at that stage, attempted murder.

But it was Tania who ended up divulging the truth, after she found out that he'd lied about their relationship to police, and tried to "put her under the bus".

After the discovery of Maria's body, Tania told police everything. Image: 9News.

When they arrived on her doorstep she said, "I'll tell you everything," and proceeded to detail the murder plot she insisted she had carried out under Joe's instruction.

She said Joe had provided her with a bag strap to use as a weapon, and a swimming cap to wear to avoid leaving DNA at the scene. She said he'd told her killing Maria was the only way they could be together.

As they plotted Maria's death, Joe told her "I don't want her coming out of the garage alive".

Joe Korp. Image: AAP/Julian Smith. 

So Tania waited in the family's garage on the morning of February 9th, as her lover's wife prepared to leave for work. As Maria hopped into the car, Tania strangled her from behind and once she was unconscious, bundled her into the boot.

She drove the car to the Shrine of Remembrance and abandoned it there, and eventually admitted to hearing Maria "moaning in the boot" after the attack.

"I remember when we told her she was under arrest, she said 'can I just go and tell my parents. Would you allow me to tell them without going in with me in handcuffs?'"

Fraser agreed.

"We stood outside the lounge-room door [and] I remember seeing her with her little (nine-year-old) girl on her lap, telling her parents."

As Fraser explained to True Crime Conversations, "Joe had manipulated Tania, in my belief…he was controlling, he was coercive, he was promising her the world and Tania believed him".

Tania became a prosecution witness, and received a sentence of 12 years with a nine-year non-parole period.

Watch: Tania was released from prison in February 2014. Post continues below.

Joe, on the other hand, plead not guilty and as Fraser said, "was going to fight it all the way".

As he awaited trial for charges including attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and intentionally causing serious injury — Joe was released on bail, with his conditions even modified to allow him a supervised visit to his wife in hospital before her death.

The day of Maria's funeral, Joe died by suicide.

Prior to his death, he messaged a journalist telling them, "I'm going to join my beautiful wife, I can't live without her".

20 years on, this story still captivates audiences.

Maria Korp's story and that of her husband's affair and eventual suicide has been turned into a television movie called Wicked Love: The Maria Korp story starring Rebecca Gibney and Vince Colosimo, a book titled The Maria Korp Case: The Woman In The Boot Story, by Sunday Herald Sun journalist Carly Crawford and — most controversially — an opera called Midnight Son, which premiered in 2012.

For Fraser, turning this harrowing story into an opera is a step too far.

"I find that offensive," she told True Crime Conversations.

"I do feel conflicted (in the media's interest in this story), because I think there are a lot of lessons to be learnt [from this case], like the fact Maria had an intervention order out on Joe at one point because she was worried he was going to do something.

"[In the days before] she went missing, she went with Joe to court and took the intervention order off….My point to that is, when you are concerned, go to the police and if the police had been the ones to take the intervention order out, it wouldn't have been removed."

"People are concerned that it's 'just a piece of paper' but it gives police some powers. It's powerful," she added.

But the glaring lesson from this case is — if you're unhappy in your relationship, leave.

"All he had to do was say 'I don't love you anymore,'" Fraser said.

"Just to talk to someone," she urged. "Tell somebody 'I've had enough, I want to be with my mistress,' Just talk…just leave."

"[Maria was] such an innocent person. All she wanted to do was please Joe, and all he could think about was murdering her. What some people do never ceases to amaze me."

Feature image: Wikimedia.