Convicted killer Badgerow makes bail
Will live at home with mother and brother while awaiting appeal
Convicted killer Robert Badgerow is being released on bail.
While his mom is planning a barbecue to welcome him home, his victim’s family is angry — but not surprised — that the justice system has once again put the rights of a killer before a victim.
The paperwork will be ready for Badgerow’s family to sign at Hamilton’s John Sopinka Courthouse on Friday and he will be released from Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison near Kingston, in the days after that. If he abides by his conditions, he will remain out of custody and once again live with his mother and brother in Binbrook until the Court of Appeal for Ontario hears his appeal.
The Court of Appeal in Toronto heard Badgerow’s bail application earlier this month. Lawyers and family were notified of the decision Thursday while the official written decision from the court is expected Friday.
Badgerow, the first person in Canada to be tried four times for the same first-degree murder, was found guilty last December of raping and murder-
ing Diane Werendowicz in 1981. Her partially clothed body was found face-down in a creek.
The case went unsolved for 17 years — during which Badgerow continued to live and work in this community — until DNA technology matched semen found in Diane to Badgerow, a Dofasco steel worker.
Now 59, Badgerow has always maintained his innocence, testifying that he had anonymous, consensual sex with Diane outside a Stoney Creek bar and that someone else attacked her after she left him to walk home.
A jury found Badgerow guilty at his first trial, which was overturned on appeal. Jurors at his second trial could not come to a unanimous decision and it ended with a mistrial. The same thing happened at his third trial. His fourth trial, which took place in Kitchener over three months last fall, was the first time a jury was allowed to hear all the evidence in the case. That included the fact that a critical 911 call made a few days after the murder — which revealed intimate details of the crime — was likely made from a pay phone just steps away from where Badgerow was working a shift at Dofasco.
Badgerow has been serving a life sentence with credit given for 11 years already spent behind bars. It is routine for offenders convicted of first-degree murder to appeal.
What isn’t routine, is for a convicted murderer to be granted bail pending appeal.
“Most guys charged with murder don’t get bail, let alone a guy who’s convicted of it,” says lawyer Ingrid Grant, who represented Badgerow at his last trial and on the bail application.
It comes as little surprise that Badgerow has been granted bail. He has never faced additional charges since his arrest. Nor has he left the Hamilton area in the decades since the murder. He never breached his bail conditions. This is his fourth time making bail.
Jamie Klukach, the Crown attorney on the bail motion, argued Badgerow’s detention is necessary to uphold public confidence in the justice system.
What none of the four sets of jurors knew during their trials was that when Badgerow was arrested for Diane’s murder, he was also charged with the attempted murder of a young woman named Debbie Robertson.
It was Robertson who led police to Badgerow.
Seven weeks after Diane was murdered just half a kilometre away, Debbie was groped and stabbed through the ear with a screwdriver as she walked home. In hospital, she picked Badgerow — her former schoolmate — out of their high school yearbook for detectives.
But by the time that case came to trial many years after the brutal attack, key witnesses had died and evidence was lost. The case was tossed out.
Badgerow’s bail conditions will essentially be the same as they were when he was on bail during his most recent murder trial. He will live with his mother and brother Clint at their home in Binbrook. The two of them, plus his father and sister, will be his sureties. He will have a curfew.
Now he will have to check in at a Hamilton police station every week, rather than once a month like before.
“The system is in the criminal’s favour — even when he’s convicted,” says Karl Werendowicz, Diane’s nephew. “A murderer shouldn’t be out on bail. He could be a flight risk now. He’s got more on the line now.”
The granting of bail has left the Werendowicz family wondering what the point of the trial was.
Meanwhile, the Badgerows are celebrating.
“I don’t know if Rob knows yet,” his mom, Lorrien Badgerow, says. He calls her a few times a week and she is anxious to share the news.
He has been coping well in prison, Lorrien says. She has not been able to make the long trip to visit him at Millhaven, so she has not seen him for eight months.
“His shoes are at the back door,” she says.
“His white running shoes on the rack, right where he left them. I haven’t touched a thing … A mother’s bond is a mother’s bond.”
Lorrien knows some people will be angry about her son’s release. But she also says many folks around Binbrook ask kindly about Rob and wish the family well.
“And that fills my heart.”