‘Worst case scenario’: Witness details grisly discovery in Bagabuyo trial

A Kamloops man whose grandfather was allegedly tasked with helping dispose of a body made the dark discovery himself as he sought answers.

Justin William Robertson, 42, was the first witness called in the trial against Rogelio “Butch” Bagabuyo, the Kamloops lawyer accused of killing his former friend and client Mohd Abdullah.

In the days before Robertson found Abdullah’s body, he grew concerned his grandfather was being taken advantage of to help with something suspicious. Robertson’s grandfather told him Bagabuyo asked for help burying a plastic tote somewhere outside Kamloops, but its contents were a secret, he testified April 15.

“To me it seemed very suspicious, and I was concerned,” Robertson said.

What he discovered inside the van led to Bagabuyo’s initial arrest.

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Robertson and his grandparents lived at the home where police would later find Abdullah, who was a former TRU lecturer and was previously reported as missing just days earlier in March 2022.

Responding to questions from Crown prosecutor Ann Katrine Saettler, Robertson said he lived in his grandparents’ basement suite and Bagabuyo was a friend of his grandfather.

Robertson said his grandfather, Wynand Rautenbach, and Bagabuyo carried a mysterious plastic tote in a rented cargo van two times over three days, looking for a place to bury the bin. He asked but didn’t get answers about what was inside.

On the third night, after Rautenbach’s second outing that spanned all the way to the Alberta border, Robertson and his grandmother kept pressing for answers to no avail, he told the court.

“Eventually it was determined we were unsatisfied… We need to determine what’s being done here,” Robertson said. “I felt my grandfather was being taken advantage of or put up to something, so I decided I was going to open the van and see what was in there.”

He had already looked in the window before to find clothing, shovels and a tarp covering something. This time, wearing gloves out of concern it might have been a crime scene, he opened the door to the white cargo van and uncovered the tarp to find a large, black plastic bin with a red lid. It was held shut with ratchet straps, he said.

Robertson said he loosened the straps and opened the lid.

“I lifted it up and I was looking straight down. I could just see bags and there may have been some papers. I thought, OK, no big deal,” he said. “I lifted it a little bit more… And I saw a foot and a sock, with a pattern on the bottom, and a leg in jeans. I just had this sinking feeling and ringing in my ears, and I kind of felt like it was going to jump at me, but of course it didn’t move.”

He closed the lid and went back inside.

“I sat down with wide eyes. (My grandparents) were asking me, ‘What? What is it?'” Robertson testified. “I said ‘we have to call the police. It’s the worst case scenario’ and then everyone started freaking out.”

READ MORE: Police seized bags, ropes, shovels and a blood-stained jacket in Bagabuyo murder investigation

He did later call Kamloops RCMP to the Dufferin neighbourhood home.

Rautenbach testified later Tuesday afternoon he “didn’t know Kamloops had so many police.”

Now 87 years old, Rautenbach said Bagabuyo was his “best friend in Kamloops” and was open to helping when the lawyer came “desperately” to his door on March 15, 2022.

Rautenbach said they went for a coffee, then rented a cargo van in his own name so Bagabuyo could carry the “stuff” he wanted to get rid of.

Previously described as “frail” by Robertson, Rautenbach said he struggled to help move the bin from Bagabuyo’s SUV to the cargo van. Partly due to his arthritis, he said he could barely lift more than 20 pounds.

On March 15 and 17, they drove in multiple directions from Kamloops looking for a place to bury the bin. Rautenbach said he didn’t know what was inside as they travelled back roads around Logan Lake, Tunkwa Lake and Lac le Jeune, even going all the way to the Alberta border and Dunn Lake, trying to find a “soft spot to dig and bury the box.”

He wasn’t cross-examined by Bagabuyo’s lawyers on April 15, but at times he admitted to being “confused” and struggled to remember details or speak clearly. Robertson and Rautenbach’s wife, Irene, both said his memory was declining slightly in 2022, but it’s gotten worse more recently.

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He couldn’t recall just how far they drove looking for a place to dig, but he said they put on “a lot of mileage.” Robertson testified he showed Rautenbach the ground was simply too cold to dig in the early spring cold during that week, but it didn’t stop them from making their second attempt.

On the night his grandson searched the van and opened the plastic bin, Rautenbach said he protested to protect Bagabuyo.

“I said, ‘No, you can’t open the box,'” Rautenbach testified. “Because it was private. To me it was Butch’s stuff, not our stuff to open, and he asked me to help him.”

They were the first to testify at the trial in which Bagabuyo is charged with the first-degree murder of Abdullah. Crown lawyers said the evidence in the coming weeks will show Bagabuyo helped Abdullah hide more than $700,000 from his wife during a divorce, but it was gone when Abdullah came asking for it to be returned.

The trial comes more than three years since Abdullah was found dead in the cargo van and two more years since Abdullah allegedly started asking for the money to be returned.

Rautenbach will return to the stand on April 16 for questions from Bagabuyo’s lawyer.