Family relives 'surreal' horror

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Ed Bachewich and Beverly Rowbotham's sister, Betty Bachewich, shown in 2000. (JEFF DE BOOY / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES)

Ed Bachewich and his son Ray hurriedly jumped out of their beds and rushed to the truck to search for Beverly Rowbotham, Ed's sister-in-law, a Winnipeg murder trial heard Friday.

Rowbotham's husband, Mark Stobbe, had just phoned them, waking them to say his wife was missing.

It was just after 3 a.m. Oct. 25, 2000.

It was the second call Stobbe made to the Bachewich home -- five hours earlier he called Ed asking if he knew someone who could do some flooring work.

Bachewich also told jurors that's when Stobbe mentioned his wife had gone on a quick shopping trip to Safeway in Selkirk to buy mini-muffins and treats for her son's nursery school Halloween party, and to take advantage of a 10 per cent discount.

Little did Bachewich, his wife Betty, son Ray and daughter Julie know these calls and other events would bring them 11 years later to courtroom 214 of the old Law Courts Building to testify in the prosecution's case against Stobbe.

The second call changed their lives forever.

"Mark asked if I had seen Bev that evening, if Bev was there, " testified Julie Bachewich, who said she answered the phone when Stobbe called. "He said, 'I just woke up on the couch with Jakey, and that Bev wasn't home." Jakey is Jacob, the couple's youngest of two boys.

Within minutes, Ed and his son were searching the area between St. Andrews and Selkirk looking for Beverly Rowbotham's car, a tan four-door Crown Victoria. They learned a couple of hours later they had driven right past it -- it was too far back from the main road, hidden by some trees, to see it in the darkness of an unlit parking lot.

"It was well camouflaged," Ed told jurors, adding in the next breath it might have been a good thing they didn't find it.

Inside, slumped on the car's backseat, was Rowbotham's bloodied body, dead from what the prosecution has said were 16 blows to her head from a hatchet. A finger and part of another finger were chopped off, a sign she had raised her hand to protect herself, Crown attorney Wendy Dawson told the jury in her opening address.

Rowbotham was wearing no socks or shoes -- a pair of each was nearby on floor of the car -- and there's blood-splatter evidence, Dawson said, that Rowbotham was also struck when she was inside the car.

Stobbe, her husband of seven years, has pleaded not guilty to second degree murder.

His trial ended its first week Friday and is scheduled to continue through to the end of March. Dawson has said she plans to call 76 witnesses.

The Crown's case, based on circumstantial evidence, accuses Stobbe of clubbing his 42-year-old wife to death in the backyard of the couple's St. Andrews home and then shoving her body inside the family car and driving it 14 kilometres north to Selkirk, parking it along a fence near Kelly's Selkirk Service Station. The Crown says Stobbe then rode a bicycle home.

Ray Bachewich told jurors he and his dad searched the area for Rowbotham, but were soon told by RCMP to go back to her St. Andrews home.

An officer there told them: "We've found Bev, but it's not good. We're opening a homicide investigation," Ray remembered the Mountie telling the family.

"Someone cried out, 'What? Murder? What happened?' It was a shock. We kind of had a group embrace. It was a very surreal time for a few hours, for sure," Ray Bachewich testified.

In the days after, Ed Bachewich said he remembered Stobbe -- then a senior bureaucrat in the Doer government -- telling him his wife's assailant likely attacked her when she was leaving to go shopping.

"He said she had gone to Safeway and that somebody must have got in the car, killed her, took her to Selkirk and left her there," Ed Bachewich said.

Court has heard police found dozens of blood drops, bone fragments, clumps of hair and other material in the garage and backyard of her home. Eleven of those items would later be linked by DNA testing to the deceased.

The Crown's theory is the couple got into an argument that ended in violence. Beverly Rowbotham hated the house they were living in and wanted to move to where she and their boys wouldn't be so isolated.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 4, 2012 B2