Nineteen months to the day since she was married on a Filipino island, Joan Ryther was making the short walk to the Queensland McDonald's where she worked.
She never made it.
Instead, the expectant mother was stomped on, raped and left to die "face down in the grass" of a Logan yard, a Brisbane Supreme Court jury heard on Monday.
Andrew Michael Burke, 21, has pleaded not guilty to raping and murdering the pregnant woman on May 21, 2013, as well as a charge of killing her unborn child.
On the first day of his trial, the jury heard her partially clothed body was found the next morning by a neighbour who had at first walked past, assuming the figure was a mannequin, until he spotted traces of blood on his return trip.
The discovery came the morning after she'd been attacked walking to the Logan Central McDonald's and dragged bleeding into the front yard of a nearby house, it was heard.
Crown prosecutor Glen Cash told the jury she was then raped with an object, leaving her with "massive" injuries before likely being kicked in the head and strangled.
"She was viciously assaulted," he said.
Her husband, Cory, said he became worried after he stopped by the fast food outlet that night to drop off car keys and a phone for his wife, to find the 27-year-old hadn't turned up.
He said he was "probably the last person to know" when police eventually confirmed his late wife's body had been found.
"I still had hope she was alive," he said.
The critical issue for the jury would be the identity of Mrs Ryther's attacker and whether or not Burke was that person, Mr Cash said.
He said DNA from the back of her jumper was later found to be 100 billion times more likely to belong to Burke, who had been in the area that night trying to steal a car and had earlier stolen a packet of screwdrivers.
A bandage found in the wheelie bin of a home he later visited tested positive for DNA consistent with Mrs Ryther, who was about eight weeks pregnant, it was heard.
But defence barrister Frank Martin warned the jury not to be "bamboozled" by the DNA evidence and urged them to consider it carefully.
The trial continues.
