‘Circumstantial’ trial hears from possible eyewitness
WINNIPEG — Mark Stobbe says he was asleep in his home at the time his wife was killed. But a witness has come forward claiming he saw Stobbe — or someone with a very similar build — at the scene where Beverley Rowbotham’s body was dumped.
“That’s him,” Garry Beaton said Friday while pointing out Stobbe in the courtroom.
It was a surprising development in what has been touted as an entirely circumstantial case. Jurors were previously told the Crown had no eyewitness evidence against Stobbe, who has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the Oct. 25, 2000, killing of Rowbotham.
Stobbe is accused of hitting his wife in the head 16 times with either a hatchet or an axe and then moving her body from the backyard of their St. Andrews, Man., home to a vehicle that was parked in Selkirk, Man. The Crown’s theory is Stobbe bicycled back to his house after the slaying.
Beaton was also cycling home from his evening shift job in Selkirk in October 2000 when he spotted a vehicle sitting in a nearby car lot. He knew the owners of the business and initially thought it was one of them, working late. Upon closer inspection he realized he didn’t recognize the person sitting in the driver’s seat of the light-coloured vehicle, which had its headlights on.
Beaton added the man had a long nose and wavy hair.
“It looked like he was slouched over by the steering wheel, like he was looking for something, thinking of something,” he said.
Beaton believes the night of his viewing was the same night that Rowbotham was killed, but can’t be 100 per cent certain. Beaton said he waited until 2004 before going to police, believing what he saw that night wasn’t likely relevant to the homicide he heard about on the news. But when police issued another appeal for information on the unsolved case, Beaton says he stepped forward.
Stobbe’s lawyer, Tim Killeen, suggested Beaton has become confused about what he saw through the passage of more than 11 years. He asked Beaton whether it might have been a woman he saw inside the vehicle.
“A man’s build is different than a lady’s,” Beaton replied. Still, he conceded he didn’t have his glasses on that night and was only viewing a silhouette from a distance on his mountain bike. He said he may have only looked at the shadowy figure for between 10 and 90 seconds total.
His evidence prompted a warning to jurors from Queen’s Bench Justice Chris Martin about the nature and value of Beaton’s testimony.
“The case against Mr. Stobbe is circumstantial. You must be very cautious on relying on eyewitness testimony to find Mr. Stobbe guilty. In the past there have been miscarriages of justice, persons have been wrongfully convicted, because socalled eyewitnesses have made mistakes in identifying persons they believe responsible,” said Martin. He described Beaton’s testimony as “very generic, very sparse.”
Jurors have previously heard a 69-minute interview Stobbe gave to police in the hours after Rowbotham’s body was found. He says he fell asleep watching television after Rowbotham left the home the previous evening to complete a grocery shopping trip. He said he awoke around 2:30 a.m. to find only himself and their two children in the residence.