A man has been charged with murder over the death of missing Bendigo mother Samantha Kelly.
Peter Arthur, 44, of Kangaroo Flat, appeared at an out-of-sessions court hearing on Friday at the Bendigo Police Station.
Christine Lyons, 44, and Ronald Lyons, 43, were each charged with being an accessory to murder at the same hearing.
At the hearing, Detective Sergeant Chris Saulle said on or about January 20, Mr Arthur went to a bungalow behind a Kangaroo Flat home, where he "inflicted fatal injures" upon Ms Kelly with a hammer.
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Police said Arthur immediately returned to the main house and told Mr Lyons and Ms Lyons that he had killed Ms Kelly.
The following day, the trio allegedly concocted a story about Ms Kelly walking out of the house voluntary on January 23.
"The co-accused then spread the story that they had manufactured," Det Sgt Saulle said.
Two days after the murder, Arthur and Mr Lyons removed Ms Kelly's body from the unit and put it into a van, police alleged.
"I helped him move the body from the unit to the van - that's it," Lyons told the hearing.
The trio then allegedly told Ms Kelly's four children that their mother had "abandoned them, that's she'd had enough".
