Victim takes stand at attempted murder trial
Woman testifies about what she can remember of the night her husband allegedly attempted to poison her
Mark Rumboldt’s ex-wife took the stand in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in St. John’s Monday, admitting she doesn’t have many memories about what happened the night of Jan. 22, 2016, after a certain point.
She doesn’t remember calling 911 and telling the operator that her husband had taken Ativan with alcohol. She doesn’t remember being loaded into an ambulance by paramedics, intoxicated herself. She doesn’t remember an incident in hospital that led medical staff to call the police, fearing her husband may have drugged her. She doesn’t remember being in hospital at all, or speaking to police the next day.
The last thing she remembers of that night, she said, was being in the bathtub with a glass of sangria. Her husband had come in the bathroom a number of times and cheerfully encouraged her to “drink up,” she said, but the last time he came in, he was stumbling. He stood in front of the sink, she said, with one hand on the vanity to steady himself.
“I asked him if he had been drinking. It appeared he was going to say something and it appeared his face crumbled, like he was going to cry, like he was upset,” the woman testified. “I said, ‘What? What? You’re scaring me,’ and then he fell and hit the floor.
“I remember jumping up from the tub and saying I’m going to call 911. I thought he had been drinking or he was having a stroke. I can picture an indication from him like a nod. That’s all I remember. It’s like a hard line at the end of my memory. I don’t remember anything after that for a while.”
Rumboldt, the woman’s husband of almost 25 years, is on trial for attempting to murder her that night as well as administering to her a noxious substance, namely prescription drugs.
Over the past week, the court has heard testimony from police, paramedics and emergency room staff at St. Clare’s hospital, saying first responders had been dispatched to the couple’s west end St. John’s home after receiving the 911 call, but found no answer at the door. Paramedics called the RNC for help and eventually the woman was seen through a window on her hands and knees, crawling down a hallway, making her way down a set of steps and clumsily opening the front door. She was nearly catatonic, paramedics and police testified, and was too intoxicated to speak.
Rumboldt was in better shape, but was also intoxicated, the court has heard. He reportedly told police he and his wife had been arguing about their relationship, talking about divorcing, and she took Ativan and sleeping pills.
At the hospital, Rumboldt was first to recover, and was discharged later that night. He asked if he could sit by his wife’s bedside, hospital staff testified, and repeatedly expressed concerns about her breathing. At one point, a nurse noticed the privacy curtain had been pulled closed around the woman’s bed and she went to the bedside, and saw Rumboldt holding a facecloth to his wife’s mouth. She fetched a doctor and two other nurses, and they noticed a residue on the woman’s lips and in her mouth, along with what seemed to be pieces of a pill. On the bed was an Ativan bottle prescribed to Rumboldt and underneath the blankets was a bag containing more of his medication — a bag that had reportedly been brought to hospital with him and given back to him when he was discharged.
The woman told the court she couldn’t recall that incident - apart from a fragment of a memory of being in a hospital bed and hearing a nurse ask her if she had pills in her mouth but her memories resume two days later. She was staying with family at that point and went to RNC headquarters for an interview — her second time there, though she didn’t know it.
The day after that, the woman went to her doctor and asked for access to her emergency room report.
“On the first page it said something like, ‘Paramedics were called, husband said they had been arguing about divorce and she took some pills.’ I nearly fell off my chair when I read that.”
The woman said she and Rumboldt had been having problems for a number of months, since he told her the previous October that he wasn’t happy in the relationship and was emotionally intimate with another woman. The pair was going to counselling and things were up and down, she said, and the night in question they had decided to have a quiet night in, making pizza and having some drinks and watching a movie. Rumboldt had poured her a glass of red wine, she said, and later made her sangria instead when he felt she wasn’t enjoying it because she had taken only a few sips. The pair booked an overnight getaway to The Wilds for the following weekend on the advice of their counsellor, the woman said, and Rumboldt ran her a bath, telling her to get in and relax. When she tasted her sangria and it was extra strong, Rumboldt topped it up with 7Up, she said.
“Were you suicidal that evening? Had you talked about it? Did the marriage come up in conversation?” prosecutor Scott Hurley asked the woman, who replied no to each of the questions. She said she hadn’t taken any medication that night, and hadn’t seen her husband take any, either.
“I was willing to relax and have a nice evening with my husband.”
The woman said she began divorce proceedings days later, having come to the conclusion, through reading the medical report and speaking with police, that Rumboldt had drugged her.
“I wanted there to be another explanation, like carbon monoxide poisoning, for what had happened,” she said.
Defence lawyer Jeff Brace pointed out the woman had told police in the beginning she didn’t believe Rumboldt had done anything to hurt her, and had declined multiple times to request an emergency protection order against him from the court, since she didn’t have any concerns for her safety. She had also asked police not to pursue charges against Rumboldt.
“Because this is so painful for the kids,” she said by way of explanation, her voice cracking. “Bringing the kids here didn’t seem helpful.”
Rumboldt’s actions the night in question — pouring drinks, encouraging her to drink, running a bath for her — weren’t unusual things for him to do, the woman acknowledged.
“Why, when you called 911, did you say Ativan?” Brace asked her. “We heard the 911 call. Why, if you didn’t see him take anything, and you thought it might be a stroke, are you suggesting it was an Ativan overdose unless you gave it to him?”
“I have no memory of anything after the bathtub,” the woman replied.
“If you have no memory, how do you know you didn’t take any medication?” Brace asked.
“I had no reason to,” the woman responded.
Rumboldt’s trial is set to continue Tuesday morning with testimony from a forensic specialist.