Steve Fesus has pleaded not guilty to murdering his then 18-year-old wife Jodie Fesus whose body was discovered partially uncovered at a camping ground near Wollongong in September 1997.

His then friend Glee Richardson told his Supreme Court murder trial she called him in the days after Jodie went missing and Fesus said: ‘‘Oh you haven’t heard the news have you? ... She’s gone. She left me.’’

Ms Richardson and her husband Aaron Richardson then went to Fesus’s home to see him.

Inside, Mr Richardson said the usually messy home was immaculate, ‘‘almost sterile’’.

Family portraits featuring Jodie had also gone.Mr Richardson said he had questioned Fesus about what happened on August 12, 1997, when Jodie was said to have disappeared.Fesus said he had run three errands that morning before retuning home to find her gone.

But while they were there the order of the errands Fesus did had changed, Mr Richardson added.

When asked if Jodie took anything, Fesus replied: ‘‘Nothing, she had taken nothing. I left her naked and as far as I could see she would still be.’’

‘‘Steve said at the time she had been putting money away. He had no idea where the money was or how much it would have been,’’ Mr Richardson recalled.

When Mr Richardson suggested they go down to the train station where a purse of Jodie’s had been found to see if there were any other signs of her, he said Fesus ‘‘wasn’t interested’’.

Fesus met Jodie in 1995 when she was 16 and he was 24 but by 1997 their relationship was fractured and his ‘‘frustration, discontent and resentment intensified’’, the crown says.

On the night of August 11, 1997, they allege the pair fought and Fesus - believing Jodie was going to leave him - murdered her by choking or strangling her.He then allegedly buried her body.

The trial continues.

AAP