Sisters spoke hours before death

Hours after speaking by phone with her sister, Betty Rowbotham was in a deep sleep when she was awoken and told the same sister was missing.

Only a few hours later, she heard the worst news possible -- her sister, Beverly Rowbotham, was found slain inside the family's car outside Kelly's Selkirk Service Station, 14 kilometres from her home and husband and two children.

Betty Rowbotham told a nine-man, five-woman jury Thursday she last spoke to her sister on the evening of Oct. 24, 2000; Beverly was checking that Betty would still look after her two young boys while Beverly went for a job interview the next morning with the province's Justice Department.

Betty said a few hours later she was awoken by her daughter at about 2:30 a.m., who said Mark Stobbe, her sister's husband, had called.

"She asked me if we'd seen Auntie Bev," Betty said. "She said she got a call from Mark that Bev was missing."

While her husband hurriedly got dressed and headed out into the night with their son to look for Beverly, Betty told court she phoned Stobbe to offer to look after the two boys.

"He said Bev said she would go into town to Safeway to finish up the shopping," Betty said. "He fell asleep and when he woke up the lights were on and Bev was not home."

Betty said that, when she got there, Stobbe told her he wanted to look outside for his wife. He was gone for about half an hour.

It was in the early morning hours of Oct. 25 that a police officer came to the St. Andrews home and told them Beverly was dead.

"I gasped," she said. "I hugged my husband and son. Stunned disbelief... I remember holding Mark's hand and waiting for Bev to come home."

Stobbe, 54, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

The jury has been told Rowbotham's body -- she was barefoot -- was found slumped in the back seat of the couple's Crown Victoria sedan, her skull split open and a finger and part of another finger chopped off. Police later found a severed finger on the car's floor next to a child's toy car. A pair of socks and slip-on shoes were also on the car's back-seat floor.

Crown prosecutor Wendy Dawson has told jurors they believe Stobbe killed his wife with a hatchet by striking her 16 times in the head, driving her body to Selkirk, and returning to his RM of St. Andrews home on a bicycle.

Betty told court she remembered seeing an axe or hatchet in the backyard of her sister's home a few weeks before she was killed, in a tree stump used as a chopping block.

When asked by Dawson if she thought the tool would be put away later, the woman said the couple was "really conscious of safety."

She also testified it was not like her sister to put her shoes and socks on the floor of the car's back seat, behind the driver's seat.

Testimony from Betty Rowbotham's husband, Ed Bachewich, continues today. The trial is scheduled to run until the end of March.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Husband swore, sighed

RCMP wire-tapped Mark Stobbe's home phone on the day they told family members his wife Beverly Rowbotham was killed in the backyard of the family's St. Andrews home.

Here's a portion of a conversation between Stobbe and his sister-in-law, Betty Rowbotham, taped Feb. 28, 2001, and played for the jury Thursday.

Rowbotham has just told Stobbe RCMP had told her that day they had forensic confirmation that Beverly Rowbotham was killed in the backyard.

BR: "You gonna be OK?"

MS: "Um, not completely, but I'll get through."

BR: "I'm tired. So that's, that's one less thing to wonder about I guess."

Those pauses and his swearing were unusual for him, she told jurors.

".

BR: "You've always said that you always felt that."

MS: "Well, the reason I thought that was because of all the um, the tarps in the backyard when they were doing the search of the house."

Betty Rowbotham also told jurors that during the conversation, Stobbe swore and sighed heavily.

Those pauses and his swearing were unusual for him, she told jurors.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 3, 2012 A7