Date set for Badgerow’s 4th murder trial

(Updated)

A date for the Robert Badgerow’s fourth murder trial has been set, but it won’t begin until September 2016. We take a look at this case and why it’s bounced around the legal system for three decades.

Former Hamilton steelworker Robert Badgerow is a man who is forever connected, rightly or wrongly, with a murder.

Badgerow from November 2011: “On her death alone, I had nothing to do with that. I’m sory the young woman met the end that she did but it wasn’t at my hand.”

It was June 20th, 1981 when Diane Werendowicz was killed. Her body was found in the Stoney Creek area. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

The case went cold until 1998 when police used DNA evidence to match with Badgerow. He was convicted, then on appeal the conviction was overturned. A second trial ended in a hung jury, as did a third. And now, a fourth will take place 35 years after the murder.

Jeff Manishin, criminal defense lawyer with Ross and McBride: “I don’t view it as amazing. It’s unusual.”

Jeff Manishin is a criminal defense lawyer, who says that this case is unique in the number of times Badgerow has gone to trial: “But because it’s a human system so many things are possible.”

In Manitoba, Thomas Sophonow went through 3 murder trials with the last ending in a hung jury in 1985. The crown did not proceed further, but Sophonow also remained connected.

Tom Sophonow from a YouTube video: “It was a cloud hanging over my head. I was still guilty, I was still considered a murderer.”

In 2000, police found evidence which exonerated Sophonow. Manishin was reluctant to predict if this will be the final trial for Badgerow, but: “I would say this, that if this trial ended in a hung jury again, no doubt, the defense would seek a stay of proceedings in the future.”

The difference for the fourth Badgerow trial is that evidence which had previously been deemed inadmissible will now be included. That evidence: 2 days after the murder, a 911 call was made. The call was traced to a pay phone just a few hundred feet from where Badgerow was working.