‘Dishevelled’ B.C. murder suspect confessed, said he’d attempted suicide: RCMP officer

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

Editor’s note: If you or anyone you know is struggling with mental health, there are a number of ways to get help, including by calling or texting the Suicide Crisis Helpline at 988. A list of local crisis centres is also available here.

Two Mounties at a B.C. Supreme Court murder trial told a jury that a “dishevelled” man appeared on a forest-service road as a bloodstained car was being towed away and told the officers he’d murdered his ex-wife and had tried to kill himself.

Const. Nick Prystupa testified Tuesday at Vitali Stefanski’s second-degree murder trial in Kamloops, B.C., that he was “confused” to see the man, who was shoeless with his toes poking out of his socks when he approached police.

“I absolutely did not expect to see him,” the officer said.

The trial heard that police had used drones, dogs, dozens of officers and thermal-imaging technology to search for the man and his ex-wife Tatjana Stefanski, who had been reported abducted the day before from outside her home in Lumby, B.C.

“I assumed that if he was anywhere within that area, he would have been found by them and not by me.”

Prystupa said it was the morning of April 14, 2024, when Vitali Stefanski appeared, looking damp and as though he had spent the night outside.

“I saw that one of his fingers was white, which I presumed would have meant frostbite or extreme cold conditions,” the officer said, adding that he also noticed a pinkish substance on Stefanski’s shirt around the abdomen area, where he had suffered a small incision the size of a nickel slot.

Prystupa described how he put his police lights on to alert the tow truck ahead that he was stopping, saying he then got out of his vehicle was told by Stefanski that the Audi being towed was his car and he was the reason the officers were there.

The officer asked the man if he was Vitali Stefanski and where his ex-wife was.

The response: “‘Yes, and I killed her. Yes, she is dead,’” Prystupa told the jury.

“I’m quite confident that those were the words used, but I am 100 per cent certain on the intentions and what his meaning for those words would have been,” he said under questioning from the Crown.

Prystupa said he decided in that moment to arrest the man for murder, even though no body had been found.

“With the amount of blood that was in that vehicle, I assumed a serious injury had taken place, so I also used that in my grounds to arrest him for murder, as well as the information he provided to me,” he said, describing the man’s demeanour during the arrest as “emotionless and matter of fact.”

• READ MORE: ‘Someone was seriously hurt’: B.C. Mountie testifies about finding blood-stained Audi

Tatjana Stefanski’s body was found several kilometres away later that day.

Vitali Stefanski has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 44-year-old ex-wife.

Under cross-examination, defence lawyer Tony Lagemaat suggested that the officer did not hear a confession, pointing out that the confession wasn’t in the officer’s notes. He also suggested to the officer that he did not arrest his client for murder.

Prystupa disagreed.

Lagemaat then suggested the arrest was based on the blood found inside the car and not on anything his client said at the scene.

Prystupa again denied the suggestion.

Earlier Tuesday, Const. Neil Horne, who was in another cruiser trailing behind the tow truck that morning, testified to hearing the confession. He told the jury that Stefanski had also made a gesture to indicate his ex-wife’s body was not nearby but down the forest road.

Horne said the man also showed the officers a “one-inch incision” on his abdomen and revealed a knife before placing it on the ground in front of them.

After he was arrested, he was taken to a hospital in Vernon, B.C., for treatment.

Lagemaat challenged Horne under cross-examination, suggesting the officer had been in his car and didn’t hear the murder confession or any conversation between the accused and the arresting officer.

Horne disagreed.

He had testified on direct examination that he and Prystupa both got out of their cruisers at a distance where they could hear the suspect at a normal volume.

Prystupa testified that he was unsure when Horne got out of his car as his attention was “100 per cent” on the suspect.

Horne said the officers encountered Stefanski about 1.5 kilometres from where the Audi was found, which was six kilometres from the location of the body.

Crown lawyer Rigel Tessmann told the B.C. Supreme Court last week that a bent and bloodied knife near the body had the DNA of both Tatjana and Vitali Stefanski. He said the victim had suffered 21 “sharp force wounds” to her legs, arms and hands as well as seven stab wounds to her chest and ribs that injured her heart and lungs and led to her death.

The defence has not yet told the jury its theory of events.

The trial is expected to continue Wednesday.

This report by Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press, was first published June 2, 2026.