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).
As the cross-examination of Vitali Stefanski continued Tuesday afternoon, the accused murderer’s description of the events surrounding the death of his ex-wife two years ago became increasingly clouded.
Cloudy was Vitali’s memory regarding a 52-second phone call he’d had with Tatjana Stefanski just minutes before the Lumby woman got in his Audi car at the top of her driveway the morning of April 13, 2024, and was never seen alive again.
Cloudy was Vitali’s account of the words he and Tatjana had exchanged during the 17 seconds that Tatjana was seen on video surveillance summiting the sloped driveway before she entered his vehicle.
And cloudy was Vitali’s wording of how exactly she entered the vehicle, with the Crown asserting during cross-examination that he pushed her inside, and Vitali admitting he had perhaps “slightly” pushed her.
Vitali pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder in relation to Tatjana’s death on May 25, the first day of this estimated five-week trial.
Since then, jurors in the B.C. Supreme Court trial in Kamloops have heard from Crown witnesses that Vitali admitted to police that he killed Tatjana, the mother of his two children, and that her body was found down a steep embankment on a logging road outside of Lumby on April 14 with 21 sharp-force wounds, among them seven stab wounds that proved fatal.
After a pathologist took the stand on Monday to describe Tatjana’s injuries, the Crown rested its case. On Tuesday, the defence called Vitali to the stand and asked him a number of questions, over the course of which Vitali said Tatjana had cut herself with his knife while in his vehicle, and later, that she had “slipped” out of the vehicle while it was parked on Mabel Lake Road and had fallen down an embankment on her own accord, despite his attempt to lift her back into the car.
The Morning Star previously published a full account of how Tuesday’s proceedings began, through defence lawyer Tony Lagemaat’s direct examination of Vitali to the beginning of the Crown’s cross-examination.
Following a break in the proceedings, the Crown had a number of questions for Vitali Tuesday afternoon.
Crown prosecutor Laura Drake asked Vitali about the passport found in the suitcase full of personal belongings he had admitted to giving his son that same morning of April 13.
Drake said Vitali had told police the next day that the passport was in the suitcase by accident. That statement contradicted what Vitali had said moments before, which was that he’d placed the passport in the front pocket the morning of April 13.
Drake asserted that Vitali had lied to police about the passport, because it would have looked suspicious to police if he had given his valid German passport to his son the day before Tatjana’s body was found.
“It would look suspicious if I had given it, yes,” Vitali agreed.
“So you lied to police,” Drake continued.
“No,” Vitali retorted. “I just was not sure where everything is, where it’s at, because at that time … I was not believing that she is deceased.”
Drake asked Vitali if he was in fact telling the jury that he believed Tatjana to be alive on April 14, after he had previously described pulling her body out of his car and saying it was so heavy he couldn’t put it back in the car.
“Yes,” Vitali said.
“There is no way on April 14, 2024, you thought she was still alive,” the Crown lawyer countered, drawing further denial from Vitali.
Later in the cross-examination, Drake asked Vitali about the voice message he’d left for his daughter in Russian at 7:57 a.m. April 13, when he told her she and her brother were “going to be alone,” and that Tatjana had “destroyed” their lives.
The Crown lawyer asked Vitali to explain the message in various ways before positing the Crown’s belief as to what the message meant:
“Mr. Stefanski, I’m going to suggest this to you. This is you saying goodbye forever to your daughter. That’s what this message is,” Drake said.
Vitali countered that all he was saying was that he was moving. He told the court he intended to move to Salmon Arm where he had a job lined up, but admitted he never told his daughter specifically about Salmon Arm.
Drake asserted that when Vitali left his daughter the message, he knew she was never going to see her mother again. Vitali denied this.
He agreed that he called Tatjana at 8:02 a.m. that same morning — the second phone call they’d had that morning.
Vitali said he couldn’t remember if his son was with him at the time he made the second, 52-second phone call to Tatjana, but after video evidence was shown to him he agreed that his son had been there.
At this point, Vitali’s memory appeared to falter, as he responded to several questions by saying he didn’t remember what happened.
“Mr. Stefanski, your memory of this morning isn’t very good at all, in fact, is it?” Drake questioned.
“I just don’t remember. I know I called two times,” he said.
Drake suggested that during the second phone call with Tatjana, which Vitali said was unclear in his memory, he had told her to come up to the top of the driveway.
At this point, the clouds in Vitali’s memory of this conversation appeared to part.
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I never invited her that she’s coming up.”
The Crown lawyer further suggested that Vitali had convinced her to come to the top of the driveway by saying he had documents to give to her.
“No,” Vitali again stated emphatically.
“How can you be certain?” Drake returned. “You told me you don’t remember everything you said.”
Vitali then said he’d had no documents to show Tatjana. Drake agreed with him on this point, but held that he’d told her there were documents.
Vitali said despite the fact he did not exactly remember the phone call, it was “impossible” that he’d asked her to come up the driveway.
The Crown lawyer and Vitali went back and forth over the bloody nose Vitali claimed Tatjana had when she later came up the driveway, passing her son on his way down. Vitali said it appeared she had been crying, adding she had allergies.
Drake used video evidence to isolate the moments when Tatjana and Vitali were both atop the driveway, before they both entered the vehicle. These moments amounted to 17 seconds.
Earlier in the day, Vitali had said he’d wanted to bring Tatjana to the RCMP upon seeing her atop the driveway. Drake asked him why he’d decided this all on his own, without having a conversation with Tatjana about it as he had claimed.
“I’m going to suggest that you pushed her into the car,” Drake said.
Vitali originally answered “no” to this suggestion. Seconds later, he added: “Maybe it looks like that,” and later he added that he “slightly” pushed her.
Drake challenged that Vitali’s latest account of those 17 seconds differs significantly from what he told police on June 1, 2024, one day after he’d been arrested and charged with Tatjana’s murder.
A video of that statement to police was shown in court.
In the video, Vitali is asked by an officer how the two of them got in the car.
“You say, ‘I stand outside, she starts harassing me.’ Do you hear yourself saying that?” Drake asked Vitali.
“That was not correct,” was Vitali’s reply.
He explained that in that statement to police, he was talking about Tatjana harassing him “maybe a week before.”
Asked if he had been lying to police, Vitali said he was not lying, instead saying his words were a “complete accident.”
“That’s what has happened here, that’s one of the accidents,” he said.
With that, the clock had run out on Day 10 of the trial, but Drake assured the court that on Wednesday morning she would go back in time in the police statement to refresh Vitali’s memory, “so you can be certain that the entire time, you were talking about April 13, 2024,” and not some prior incident.
Cross-examination of Vitali Stefanski is expected to continue at 10 a.m. June 10.