Shocking video of missing B.C. woman turns up in Peru
“She’s speaking out from the grave to tell her story.”
That’s how Abbotsford mother Kathy Kasatkin described a recently released video of the daughter she hasn’t seen in two years.
“The only way I can bear to watch it is to know that she is telling her story,” she said.
Kasatkin’s daughter Kimberlee was last seen in November of 2016. The 41-year-old mother of two was born and raised in B.C., but moved to Peru about four years ago with her common-law partner, Christopher Franz Bettocchi.
The family became suspicious when Bettocchi claimed Kimberlee had abandoned her young family. They reported their daughter’s disappearance to Abbotsford Police and spent six weeks chasing leads in South America, asking local police and prosecutors to take the case seriously. Their efforts paid off in February 2017 when Bettocchi was arrested and charged with femicide, the murder of a woman. But without a body, the case has stalled.
The Kasatkins have returned to Peru several times to visit their grandchildren. Two weeks ago, they arrived back in Abbotsford after filing for custody of the two children, ages four and seven. Bad news followed them: A Peruvian TV station reported that Bettocchi had been released due to court delays. Another news report contained an old home video the Kasatkins believe was leaked to media showing Kimberlee, bruised and bloody, accusing her partner of assault.
The family has learned it will form part of the evidence at Bettocchi’s trial, along with a surveillance video from the family’s parking garage.
Earlier, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported that police searched the family’s home and reviewed security camera footage from a parking garage, where they saw a man believed to be Bettocchi take a large bag from an elevator to a black vehicle. A police report said experts found blood on a wall, as well as on a mattress and sheets in the family’s home.