Allan Schoenborn's estranged wife says the accused killer of their three children was a model dad, reluctant to ever spank them and eager to build things for them and play games like Lego.
Darcie Clarke, testifying at Mr. Schoenborn's murder trial Wednesday, agreed with the contents of a police interview she gave in which she said the only thing the children aged five to 10, could do to anger him was tease each other.
He would not even spank his 10-year-old daughter Kaitlynne or two sons, five-year-old Cordon or Max, 8.
Indeed, he was a great dad, she agreed.
Ms. Clarke, 38, was responding to an interview she gave an RCMP constable a few days after she came home on April 6, 2008, to find the children slain in the Merritt, B.C., mobile home in where she was living with the kids.
She was estranged from Mr. Schoenborn, 41, at the time, largely due to erratic behaviour linked to clinical paranoia that had made it a challenge to live with him, but she had left the children in his care for the evening while she spent the night at her mother's nearby apartment.
It was a routine arrangement, part of a dynamic suggested by the social-services ministry because they fought ferociously.
Ms. Clarke, who has been poised and composed except when recalling the horrors of finding the bodies of her children, quietly responded "Yes," "Fair statement," "Correct" and "True" as defence lawyer Peter Wilson did most of the talking, recounting her answers from interviews.
The case is being heard in B.C. Supreme Court by Justice Robert Powers without a jury.
Ms. Clarke said Mr. Schoenborn would get angry with her - pounding walls, screaming, groundlessly accusing her of affairs - but he never directed that anger toward the children.
The Vancouver-based roofer split his time between the Lower Mainland and Merritt. He was under a restraining order governing his contact with Ms. Clarke, but she allowed him to spend time with the children.
Ms. Clarke told police Mr. Schoenborn had built a pole so Max could slide down from the upper bunk bed in his room, as well as a bed with a dresser for Kaitlynne.
She told police he spread his affection among the children, showing no favouritism among them.
Still, she told police her partner of 15 years came foremost to mind when asked who had harmed the children "just because of his mental stability."
In follow-up questioning by the crown, Ms. Clarke said she was heavily medicated during her conversations with police so she might not have known what she was saying.
Mr. Schoenborn has pleaded not guilty to three charges of first-degree murder. The Crown alleges he stabbed his daughter to death and strangled or smothered his sons as part of a plan to secure revenge on his wife over issues in their relationship.
Earlier this week, the court heard about the contents of a letter Mr. Schoenborn wrote from jail to his wife in which he said that, as a fugitive after the killings, he tried to kill himself in order to join his slain children.
Ms. Clarke has testified she told Mr. Schoenborn the night before the killings that a permanent reunion was unlikely.
She agreed with Mr. Wilson Wednesday that Mr. Schoenborn seemed to accept the situation.
Indeed, the family had a pleasant day before the gruesome discovery in the mobile home, with the couple individually spending time with the children in a park, at a downtown store and the apartment of Ms. Clarke's mother.
Ms. Clarke, 38, completed two days of testimony Wednesday morning. Unlike other witnesses, she had not had to walk by Mr. Schoenborn as he sat in the prisoners dock. Instead, she entered and left the courtroom via a door beside the empty jury box, guided by a court sheriff. She tended not to look at Mr. Schoenborn across the court.
Immediately after Ms. Clarke, the trial heard from Wendy Carson, who lived in the same Merritt neighbourhood as Ms. Clarke and the children.
Ms. Carson said she saw the kitchen curtains open at the Clarke home the afternoon of April 5, the day before Ms. Clarke found the bodies. Mr. Schoenborn was standing in the window - a rare sight because the kitchen curtains were usually closed.
Asked if she noted anything else unusual, she said "When I think of it now, I never heard the dog bark." The trial has heard the family had a dog named Van Gogh.
The next day, April 6, she saw Ms. Clarke returning home from her mother's apartment. "She was walking at a good pace; her head held high," said Ms. Carson.
Within minutes of Ms. Clarke entering the home, Ms. Carson said she heard reports of an incident in the neighbouring home on a household police scanner, then police cars began arriving. The trial has heard that Ms. Clarke summoned help after discovering the bodies of her children in two rooms of the home.
Ms. Carson recalled Mr. Schoenborn as an "oddball," who came up to her the day he first turned up in December, 2007, and told her that he and his wife preferred to be left alone. "It's not a way to meet your new neighbours," she dryly observed.
Less than a week before the killings, she recalled seeing Mr. Schoenborn anxiously pacing on a downtown Merritt street as she drove by in her truck.
She agreed with a suggestion by co-defence counsel Rishi Gill that Mr. Schoenborn, who now sports a heavy beard, shoulder-length hair, tends to blue jeans and does not wear shoes in court, tended to look like "he had just crawled out of bed,"
"His hair never looked combed," she said. "He looked scruffy."
Kim Robinson, a Merritt-area tracker and hunter who helped hold Mr. Schoenborn for RCMP after the fugitive was found in the woods near Merritt 10 days after the killings, is to testify this afternoon.
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