Badgerow trial

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Former Dofasco co-workers identified Robert Badgerow as the voice on the 911 call after Diane Werendowicz was found dead. The steelworkers were some of today’s witnesses at the historic fourth trial going on now in Kitchener for the 1981 Hamilton murder.

The call was made to police in June of 1981, two days after Diane Werendowicz was found murdered. Police hadn’t released some of that information. They traced the call back to a phone booth at gate six at a Dofasco hot mill, but then the trail went cold.

17 years later, the case re-opened and police tried once again to identify the caller. They plastered Dofasco with a poster asking people to call a hotline to hear the 911 call for themselves, to see if they could identify the caller. The Dofasco rumour mill went into overdrive, according to witnesses like Robert Abriel, who started working at the steel mill in 1984. He told the court he was eating breakfast when he heard the 911 call broadcast on the radio.

“I froze.” He told the court. He thought his former co-worker Robert Badgerow was in the room. He didn’t call police with that opinion though, for several weeks. Joseph Steinbach also worked with Badgerow at Dofasco. He told the court he listened to the hotline with other friends from work and agreed it was the voice of the man they called “Badge.”

December 1st, 1998, Robert Badgerow was first arrested for the murder of Diane Werendowicz. He was convicted in 2001 but won an appeal and the next two trials ended with hung juries. His latest trial resumes Monday.