Australian authorities in the Solomon Islands are still working through red tape before Lance Gersbach's body can be brought back to Australia.
The 60-year-old missionary was beheaded yesterday on the remote island of Malaita after arriving in February to serve as business manager at the Atoifi Adventist Hospital. Gersbach was an accountant in Newcastle before agreeing to go to the Solomons for a year.
Solomons Police said he was murdered in a surprise machete attack yesterday.
His body has now been released by police after an autopsy in the capital, Honiara, but Australian High Commissioner Bob Davis said: "We're working with the family and with authorities, including police and the hospital, to facilitate an easy return. There are still arrangements to finalise."
He was unable to indicate a time when either Gersbach's body or his wife Jean and two children would return to Australia.
Police said there was no increased risk for other Australians in the same area. The director of the criminal investigation division, Jackson Ofu, said "It's a one-off incident. The security assessment from the area is very low. The area used to be dangerous but now it's quiet."
A spokesperson for the Seventh Day Adventist church said the three remaining Australians had been offered evacuation but had declined the move.
Ofu said Honiara police were called shortly after Gersbach was murdered by "a single assailant" about midday yesterday. He was "beheaded with a sharp instrument like a machete," Ofu said. The murderer "has disappeared and has not been seen since."
Police have assigned eight officers to the case and an Australian Federal Police officer, who was already seconded to the service, was advising on the case, Ofu said.
Locals from nearby villages were shocked at the attack and had gone to the hospital to protect the remaining expatriats, he said.
Solomon Islands police superintendent Charles Lemoa said the man was killed as he worked clearing a drainage ditch on the site, leading to suspicion his murder was linked to a land dispute.
"The people from that area are disputing the erecting of new buildings like that, high buildings like that," Lemoa said. "I believe that the deceased really did not expect the attack, and it can be termed as really a surprise attack."
The mission treasurer, Teddy Kingsley, said the planned new building was to be a shop, but a local man who claimed to be the local landowner had disputed the construction of the new store.
"He was on the site and there were two others who were there," he said. "It was lunch hour and the two went away and went home, and [Gersbach] was there doing some extra work and that's when the murderer came in."
Neither Jean Gersbach nor the couple's two daughters, aged 8 and 11, witnessed the killing.
Maurice Gersbach, 73, Lance's older brother, said the family was taking the death hard.
"It's bad enough dying under any circumstances, but when it's a tragic thing like this its pretty hard to take," Mr Gersbach said.
He described his brother as a generous and kind person.
"I always had a good rapport with him, he was a very kind and considerate sort of a fellow, he would do anything for you if he could," Mr Gersbach said.
"They were a very close and happy family."
The church said Gersbach had been a missionary before, spending three-years at the Sopas Adventist Hospital in Papua New Guinea, the operations of which were suspended in November 2000 due to safety concerns. The church praised Gersbach's "keen interest in helping others" in a statement expressing its shock at the killing.
Gersbach was born in Busselton, Western Australia, but lived most of his life in Newcastle.
The Solomon Islands have been beset by tribal conflict and lawlessness in recent years.