Sister says Rowbotham had ‘a temper’

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This article was published 01/02/2012 (5292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She liked to laugh and be around people, dress up to go out to movies and restaurants and dance, Beverly Rowbotham’s sister Betty told a Winnipeg court today.

She also had a fierce temper, Betty Rowbotham told the murder trial of Mark Stobbe, who’s accused of beating his wife Beverly to death with a hatchet more than 11 years ago.

The Rowbotham trial finished for the day early this afternoon after a juror feeling ill was sent home.

The trail reconvenes Thursday morning.

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

“She had quite a temper,” Betty Rowbotham told jurors.

“She was very quick to cut people off.”

Betty Rowbotham also described the relationship of her sister and Stobbe as close, in the months leading up to their September 1993 wedding.

“I think they were very much in love,” she said. “He was constantly gazing at her.”

Stobbe is on trial for killing his 42-year-old wife in a fit of rage Oct. 24, 2000 in the backyard of the couple’s St. Andrews home and then trying to cover it up by placing his dead wife in the back seat of the family car and driving it 14 km north to a parking lot in Selkirk.

Court has heard it’s believed he then rode a bike back to the family’s River Road house where the couple’s two children slept.

Betty Rowbotham also told court that in the weeks before her death her sister told her that she felt isolated living in the couple’s new home, and upset her husband was spending so much time at his job, working as a communcations specialist with the Doer government.

The couple had moved there from Regina about three months earlier.

“She didn’t know if she could do this anymore,” Betty Rowbotham said.

She told court she told her sister that she was a Saskatchewan-raised farm girl and could take on anything.

Betty Rowbotham is expected to be on the witness stand for the rest of the day.

The trial is anticipated to last for two months.