WARNING: this article contains content related to a domestic violence murder trial which may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been harmed by domestic violence (gender-based violence), contact Archway Society for Domestic Peace at 250-542-1122 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).
Vitali Stefanski – accused of murdering ex-wife Tatjana Stefanski in the Lumby area two years ago – was hospitalized with a self-inflicted stab wound on the day Tatjana’s body was found, the court heard on Day 3 of the B.C. Supreme Court trial Wednesday, which also saw Tatjana and Vitali’s daughter take the stand.
Vitali’s self-inflicted injury was listed among the admissions of facts at the Kamloops Law Courts May 27. The court heard he had been taken to Vernon Jubilee Hospital by the RCMP on April 14, 2024.
Vitali is accused of second-degree murder in relation to the death of Tatjana, 44, who was last seen the day before on April 13 in the driveway of her Lumby home.
Crown prosecutor Rigel Tessmann had claimed on Tuesday that Vitali emerged from the woods on April 14 near where Tatjana’s body was found on a forest service road, and confessed to the murder to police.
According to Tessmann, Vitali had told police, “‘Yes, she is dead. Yes, I have killed her.’”
Jurors have been informed that Tatjana suffered 21 sharp-force wounds, among them seven stab wounds to her chest which inflicted fatal damage to her heart and lungs.
On Day 3 of the trial Wednesday, Tatjana and Vitali’s daughter testified in B.C. Supreme Court, answering a wide range of questions from the Crown, from the time she moved to Canada from Germany to the days and moments before her mother’s death.
The daughter, now 18, said after Tatjana and Vitali separated in 2021, she would see her father every weekend at times. But as time went on she chose to no longer see him as often. This, she said, was because “our relationship wasn’t good anymore.”
When asked why that was, the daughter explained there was “a lot of toxicity” and Vitali would call her mother derogatory names, which the daughter said she didn’t appreciate. In early 2024 she was rarely talking to her father.
On the morning of April 13, the daughter was staying over at her boyfriend’s house when she received a text message from her mother saying her father was “leaving.” She found this to be strange, as her mother rarely texted her in the mornings, and the contents of the message confused her as well.
She clarified that she wasn’t awake at the time she received the message, nor at the time she received a phone call from her mother.
She also received a voice message from Vitali that morning at 7:57 a.m. The message was in Russian, which is the daugher’s first language, learned when she was a young girl living in Germany.
The voice message was played in court. An interpreter confirmed its words: “That’s it, my dear. That’s it. Dad is leaving. I wanted to see you yesterday … but it didn’t work out … You and (her brother) are going to be alone. Be tough. I did everything I could.”
The translated voice message from Vitali also said that Tatjana “destroyed our lives,” and told the daughter to stay away from Tatjana’s parents.
The daughter said she received a call around 9 a.m. from Tatjana’s partner, Jason Gaudreault, who told her Tatjana was not at the house anymore, that Vitali had visited the house and that Gaudreault was looking for them. She said Gaudreault’s voice indicated that it was a serious situation.
The daughter then called the police. Then, she and her boyfriend went driving around Lumby looking for her mom and Vitali’s black Audi.
She said after about an hour, she returned to the house to be with her younger brother.
“It seemed like everything was paused in time,” she recalled to the court.
RCMP officers arrived at the house and asked a few questions before retrieving keys to a nearby storage locker that Vitali had put inside a suitcase he’d given to his son that morning, the daughter said.
As described by the daughter in photographs she was shown in court, the suitcase contained a watch and a chain which Vitali wore often, according to the daughter, as well as silver plates, crystals, toy cars, Vitali’s German passport and a photograph of the daughter from when she was a young child.
In a brief cross-examination, defence lawyer Tony Lagemaat asked the daughter questions about where her bedroom and her brother’s bedroom were in the house, and the frequency she spent nights at her boyfriend’s house.
With regards to her statement that Vitali often wore the chain and watch found in the suitcase, the daughter agreed with Lagemaat that she had not seen much of her father in the months leading up to the incident.
Day 4 of the trial is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday, May 28.