Young mom upbeat in days before her brutal death
First day of Rubletz murder trial sees prosecution lay foundation for its case
In the spring of 2015, life was looking good for Jessica Newman. She had begun attending a gym a few months earlier and, having conquered some big personal obstacles, was springing back to life.
“She was the healthiest I’d seen her,” says her close friend of several years, Tara Saban.
Over a period of several months, Saban, a social worker, saw the 24-year-old go from someone down on herself to “this strong, incredibly independent young woman.”
The mother of three young children was even more upbeat in the days leading up to March 11, 2015, the date set for a custody hearing between her and Kevin Rubletz, the father of her youngest child.
At that hearing, Newman anticipated an agreement that would see the estranged partners split their parental time 50-50. She and Saban talked on the phone a few days before the hearing, the two excitedly discussing a celebration weekend to mark the expected outcome.
“We were looking for a hotel with a pool and a slide,” Saban, who lived in Ponoka, told Crown prosecutor Shane Parker on Monday morning. “We were making plans for the weekend after.”
The celebration would never happen. Sometime after the end of her work shift on March 10, Newman was savagely attacked. Nearly two months later — two months that included several nights of sub-zero temperatures — her decomposed body was found in a ditch north of the city. The medical examiner would count no less than 75 stab wounds on the upper regions of her petite body.
Monday was the start of what is expected to be a three-week trial in the death of the young mom, with Rubletz charged with second-degree murder.
In his opening address, Parker begins by noting Newman’s email account was named Tortured Love.
“Ironically, it foreshadowed her death,” says Parker of what he describes as a crime of passion.
As he begins to retrace the footsteps of the young restaurant server just before she vanished, Newman’s family members sit razor straight in the front row of the spectators’ gallery, riveted to his every word.
While Parker’s assertions about why Newman died and who killed her is a story heard far too many times, he notes the 21st century life lived by her and other twenty-somethings, and how when their “footsteps” vanish, it is instantaneous in this social media-dominated world.
Not long after her work shift ended on that day and she went for coffee with Rubletz, the young woman’s technological footprints evaporated. Her usual texting, emailing and Snapchat messages stopped cold.
The friends and family of Newman knew right away something bad might have happened. The mother described by Ryan Chamberlain — another witness for the prosecution on opening day — as an outgoing person who was “nice to absolutely everybody,” was always available to those in her close orbit.
Parker provides the six-men, six-women jury with a primer on what they can expect to see and hear over the next three weeks. The Crown’s case, he says, will be broken into three components, starting with Newman’s story, the investigation into Rubletz, and the forensic findings from both a van police seized from the accused as well as other forensic evidence.
As he speaks, the jury members are already hard at work, with most taking notes of the proceedings. The now 33-year-old accused sits in the prisoners box, appearing composed for the most part, but occasionally displaying animated expressions when witnesses like Saban testify.
As any good prosecutor is expected to do, Parker takes great pains to remind the jurors the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty, that much of what will happen will be slow and monotonous at times, unlike the fast-paced drama of TV crime and courts shows.
Still, on Day 1 of this trial, there is enough drama in one sentence, the one describing the victim’s 5-3, 100-pound body stabbed 75 times — a senseless tragedy that took place when Jessica Newman was planning a celebration, a new start in her still-young life.