Ex-husband emerged shoeless from woods to confess he killed Tatjana Stefanski: Crown

Jason Gaudreault, whose partner Tatjana Stefanski was found dead on April 14, 2024, after disappearing a day earlier, shows a photograph of her on his phone, in Lumby, B.C., on Monday, May 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

A Crown lawyer says murder suspect Vitali Stefanski emerged shoeless from a British Columbia forest and admitted to police that he had killed his ex-wife, whose body was then found with a bloody knife that carried both their DNA.

Rigel Tessmann has told the second-degree murder trial in B.C. Supreme Court that Tatjana Stefanski’s body was found halfway down an embankment on a dirt forest road near Mable Lake on April 14, 2024.

He says in the Crown’s opening statement that she died after suffering multiple stab wounds, including one to the chest and six to her rib cage.

Tessmann says that just uphill from her body, police found a bent and bloody knife that proved to have only two people’s DNA on it — Tatjana and Vitali Stefanski’s.

Vitali Stefanski pleaded not guilty on Monday and the defence has not yet told the jury its theory of events.

Forty-four-year-old Tatjana Stefanski was last seen on April 13, 2024, at a property in the village of Lumby, about 25 kilometres east of Vernon in the B.C. Interior.

Mounties said at the time she had been reported abducted and her body was found by officers in a rural area outside town the next day.

They said a man believed to be involved in the death “was arrested in the general vicinity,” but was later freed with conditions, and Vitali Stefanski, who had two children with his ex-wife, was charged with second-degree murder on May 31, 2024.

Tessmann told the jury on Tuesday that Tatjana Stefanski was last seen by her son at the top of a driveway talking to her ex-husband.

The prosecutor told the court that a grainy video from a storage unit facility will show two figures getting into a black car from the passenger’s side before leaving the property.

Tessmann says their daughter reported her mother missing and police soon received a tip about someone seeing a black Audi matching the description of Stefanski’s car driving up the service road.

He says police found a car and saw blood on the driver, passenger and back seats. Police broke into the car to check the trunk but no one was inside.

Tessmann says police searched the area and kept watch over the vehicle overnight, but found nothing.

He says the next morning, Mounties decided to tow the car, which is when Vitali Stefanski emerged shoeless from the woods and told them he had killed his ex-wife, whose body was then located.

Tassmann says evidence will show that Tatjana Stefanski had suffered 21 “sharp force wounds,” to her body, including her legs, arms and hands which an expert will testify are consistent with defensive wounds. She also suffered from seven stab wounds to her chest and ribs.

“Some of those stab wounds injured her lung and heart leading to her death,” he told the jury.

This report by Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press, was first published May 26, 2026.