Rowbotham had vibrant personality, but quick temper, sister testifies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/02/2012 (5291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEVERLY Rowbotham’s sister took the witness stand Wednesday, barely looking at the man on trial for killing her younger sister Beverly with 16 blows to her head with a hatchet.

Mark Stobbe sat only a few metres away from her in the ornate courtroom in the downtown Law Courts Building, listening to Betty Rowbotham describe her late-sister’s life up until the night she was killed Oct. 24, 2000. Stobbe, 54, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

“She was lots of fun. She was a very attractive woman,” Rowbotham told the jury, describing Beverly as someone who liked to be out and among friends, going to restaurants and movies. “She loved to dress up. She loved to dance. She was very intelligent.”

But she also said her younger sister had a quick temper and wasn’t easy to forgive.

“She would yell. She was very quick to cut people off. She wouldn’t talk to you. She may go a week or longer if she was really angry.”

Beverly worked for the Saskatchewan government in human resources — she joined the NDP youth wing at 14 — when she met Stobbe, who later was a senior adviser to then Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow. They married Sept. 5, 1993.

“I think they were very much in love,” Betty Rowbotham, a retired teacher, said in a quiet voice. “He was constantly gazing at her. They would cuddle a lot, just like a young couple in love.”

The couple moved to Winnipeg from Regina into a custom log house on River Road north of the city in June 2000 when Stobbe accepted a senior position with former premier Gary Doer’s government as strategic and corporate information co-ordinator with the Community Economic Development Committee.

Betty Rowbotham said it wasn’t an easy time for her sister despite being closer to her family, including her ill mother in Selkirk. Besides almost constant rain and mosquitoes, confining the two boy indoors, the yard and house needed constant upkeep and was plagued by ants. In the weeks before her death, her sister also told her that she felt isolated living in the couple’s new home and was upset her husband was spending so much time at his job. Beverly told her she wanted to move.

“She was very angry,” Betty said. “She didn’t do very well with all of these problems.”

The Crown says the couple got into an altercation late Oct. 24 that escalated with Stobbe clubbing his 42-year-old wife to death in the home’s backyard, and then trying to cover it up by placing his dead wife in the back seat of the family car and driving it 14 kilometres north to a parking lot in Selkirk. Court has heard it’s believed he then rode a bike back to the family’s home where the couple’s two children slept.

Stobbe told police his wife left the house to make a quick shopping trip to Safeway in Selkirk while he watched a baseball game on TV.

The trial resumes today after adjourning early Tuesday when a juror fell ill.

It is expected to last two months with 76 witnesses being called by Crown attorney Wendy Dawson.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca