Badgerow trial- Oct. 19th

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A Kitchener jury heard more people identify Robert Badgerow’s voice on a 911 call from 1981, a call that included unreleased information about the murder of a young nursing assistant found two days prior.

In 1981, a 19-year-old Margaret Hall got a summer job cleaning and running mail at Dofasco. She fell in love with Robert Badgerow after one day when he showed her steelworkers had been weighing down her garbage bags with heavy metal as a joke. Badgerow was engaged at the time and she was living with a man, but their secret relationship blossomed she told court. They passed notes and then kept a journal together, as the pages were shown in court, Badgerows former lover wiped tears from her cheeks. They stopped having sex but kept seeing each other when Badgerow married. That ended when Hall moved to Halifax.

In the late 90s, Hamilton police investigators flew to Halifax. Hall says she painfully listened to a 911 recording.

“I heard Robert Badgerow on the phone,” she told the jury she knew right away. “I hadn’t heard it in a lot of years, but that was Badge’s voice.”

Lead Hamilton investigator Steve Hrab then took the stand and described how it was his idea to release the 911 call to the public to get tips to help them solve the case, which was cold by 1997. Police believed only the killer would know details like the fact Diane Werendowicz was strangled with her purse.

Robert Badgerow was first tried for this crime in 2001, 20 years after Diane Werendowicz was killed. He was convicted and spent about 11 years in prison but he won an appeal and his second and third trials ended in hung jury. This is an unprecedented fourth trial for the same crime, the crown is a month into her evidence.