Man charged with killing wife said he was attacked but wasn’t injured

KITCHENER — Clark Sauve, who claims intruders shot his wife to death and beat him, had no signs of physical injury, a paramedic testified on Tuesday.

Lying on the floor in a bedroom of his Cambridge home, Sauve’s only physical complaint was a chronic headache, prosecution witness Jeffrey Bilyk said at Sauve’s second-degree murder trial in Kitchener.

Bilyk said Sauve, 62, told him he was hit a few times in the head and chest by a fist or the butt of a gun. Paramedic Brad Heikoop said Sauve told him he had been pistol-whipped.

Police found Sauve’s wife, Linda Sauve, 63, dead in another bedroom. She had been shot in the cheek and forehead, four days after Christmas in 2014.

An antique Mauser semi-automatic pistol, with one bullet in the chamber and one in the magazine, was found on a floor.

In another room, police found eight or nine handguns in safes. In the garage, they found several long guns in lockers and two pails of cartridge cases.

Sauve said in a 911 call two women with “Halloween-type masks” entered his Rouse Avenue home around 2:45 a.m., and one of the women shot his wife.

“He said he just woke up and they were in the room,” Bilyk said, adding Sauve told him he fell out of bed during a struggle.

Bilyk and Heikoop made no mention of Sauve saying the women wore Halloween masks.

Bilyk quoted Sauve as saying he heard a scream from the other bedroom, followed by a gunshot, then silence.

Heikoop said that when he told Sauve his wife was dead, Sauve became “somewhat distraught” and asked him to do something to save her. Bilyk said Sauve told him the paramedics needed to “keep working on her.”

Const. Ian Forde of Waterloo Regional Police said he saw Linda Sauve’s body in bed with the bedding off to the side. It appeared she had been sleeping when she was shot, Forde said.

On the night stand were pill bottles, water bottles and other items. “They were all very orderly. Nothing was knocked over.”

Forde canvassed neighbours. No one had heard anything.

A canine unit searched three surrounding yards and found no human scents.

Sauve, who ran a security alarm business, previously suffered a head injury and is in a wheelchair. In court, he uses an oxygen machine.

His judge-only trial in front of Justice Harrison Arrell started Monday and is scheduled for three weeks.