Ex-husband pleads not guilty in 2024 killing of Tatjana Stefanski in rural B.C.

KAMLOOPS — The ex-husband of Tatjana Stefanski, whose body was found in rural B.C. two years ago, has pleaded not guilty to murdering her.

Vitali Stefanski made the plea in front of potential jurors at the B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops, where he was dressed in a dark suit and white dress shirt and faced the judge from a Plexiglas-enclosed defendant’s box.

The second-degree murder trial, which will last about five weeks, is expected to hear the start of evidence on Tuesday.

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.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 25, 2026.