The 911 call in the Robert Badgerow trial

[projekktor id=’25669′]

A 1981 Hamilton murder is being relived in a Kitchener courtroom this month. It’s the fourth time Robert Badgerow has gone to trial for the death of 23-year-old Diane Werendowicz, a nursing assistant who was found dead in a creek after walking home alone from a bar. The Supreme court allowed the fourth trial because of evidence that had been withheld from the three previous juries and last week that evidence was played for the first time in court.

Previous juries have heard a 911 call made two days after Diane Werendowicz body was found full of information police hadn’t released to the public and former friends have previously identified the caller’s voice as Robert Badgerow. What the former juries didn’t know was that police immediately traced that call to Gate 6 of Dofasco, where in 1981 there was a phone booth. The call came two days after Diane Werendowicz was discovered by children, drowned and strangled in east Hamilton.

(That call can be heard in Lisa Hepfner’s story)

A telephone operator traced the call back to Dofasco. Officers were sent to guard the scene on Ottawa just south of Burlington, right near the tracks. Forensic specialists were urgently tracked down to check for fingerprints. Despite the quick work by police, it took 17 years and a breakthrough in DNA science before anyone was arrested in connection with the murder.

Robert Badgerow’s murder trial resumes in Kitchener on Thursday and is expected to wrap up in December at the earliest.