Mountie testifies blood and bone found at home

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/02/2012 (5293 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEVERLY Rowbotham’s severely assaulted body was found slumped in her car near a gas station in Selkirk, but bone fragments, blood and hair were also found in the backyard of her home several kilometres away.

During a long day of testimony on Tuesday, RCMP Insp. Bruce Prange, a forensics officer, detailed how investigators found a small bone fragment and a bone chip in the backyard of the RM of St. Andrews house where Rowbotham lived with her husband, Mark Stobbe, and two children.

Prange said later DNA tests showed both pieces of bone — the largest about 2.5 centimetres long — came from the slain woman.

Several drops of blood were found on leaves and on the floor of the garage of the house, as well as in the backyard, he said.

Prange also said he and other forensic officers, who were on their hands and knees for several hours in a 63-square-metre section of the yard, found clumps of cut hair as well.

Prange said while they couldn’t determine whom all the blood and hair samples were from, later tests showed nine samples matched Rowbotham’s DNA, including a sample of blood found not in the main area of the yard, but about 19 metres away from the house.

Stobbe, 54, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the slaying of his wife on Oct. 24, 2000. At the time of the slaying, Stobbe was a high-ranking communications specialist with the Doer government.

A nine-man, five-woman Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench jury has been told Rowbotham’s body was found in the couple’s car, which was parked in Selkirk. Her skull was split open and a finger and part of a finger were chopped off.

The Crown has told the jury the prosecution believes Stobbe killed his wife with a hatchet — striking her 16 times in the head — in the backyard of their home before driving with her body in the back seat of the car to Selkirk, where he left it.

Crown attorney Wendy Dawson alleges Stobbe rode a bicycle home and then tried to wash away the blood in the backyard with a hose.

Later, during questioning by defence counsel Tim Killeen, Prange agreed he never saw any evidence of water seeping from any of the garden hoses that were inside the house a few days after the slaying.

The trial continues today.

 

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca