The Medicine Hat Court of Queen's Bench facility is pictured.--NEWS PHOTO
A Medicine Hat police computer specialist, during testimony Wednesday, went through a long list of items found on a laptop seized from the home of the accused in a 2017 murder and extortion.
Robert Hoefman, 59, is accused of the first-degree murder of James Satre in October 2017 as part of a plot to extort $1 million from another individual.
MHPS Sgt. Tim Schottner told the court of locating letters similar to those which were part of the extortion when he used a digital forensic program on a computer seized from Hoefman’s home. He also ran through a number of recovered Internet searches found on the laptop.
Schottner read out portions of recovered digital documents corresponding with those hardcopy letters recovered as part of the extortion investigation – including digital files that contained verbatim text to the letters that were part of the shakedown plot.
He also testified to web searches found, ranging from looking up the name of the extortion target, weight of different cash denominations as well as those connected with the human body and major arteries.
The laptop computer was seized from Hoefman’s home after the man was arrested on Nov. 8, 2017.
Schottner also testified to being one of the officers who encountered Hoefman on Oct. 18 at his mother-in-law’s College Drive home shortly after a trail camera took an image of the man. That image was triggered when Hoefman was near the site of where a bait bag containing the million-dollar payoff was left two days earlier.
He told the court Hoefman appeared, “to be shaking quite substantially,” to the point of having difficulty responding to basic questions. Schottner suspected that was likely due to the man suffering from a mental illness.
Hoefman wasn’t taken into custody at the time with police not believing him to be a suspect.
Under cross-examination, Schottner was grilled about his personal relationship with a person of interest in the investigation who police and the extortion target thought might be responsible for the crimes.
Defence lawyer Ian McKay questioned why he didn’t step away from the file due to the situation.
“You did not think it was your ethical obligation to remove yourself from an investigation where one of the prime suspects in a murder was your friend,” McKay put to Schottner.
“No,” Schottner replied.
“You think that’s appropriate?”
“Yes.”
Schottner testified that he informed MHPS Major Crimes Staff-Sgt. Trevor Humphries of the relationship during the investigation and was cleared to continue.
McKay continued to hammer the issue.
“As soon as you found out that your good friend was being investigated for murder and extortion, not only did you not excuse yourself from the investigation – which I’m still shocked at – but you contacted him about it didn’t you,” asked McKay.
“No,” replied Schottner, appearing to be taken aback by the question.
Schottner also pushed back on McKay’s description of the suspect as being a “close” friend, stating he didn’t even have the man’s phone number. Schottner also rejected the defence lawyer’s assertion that a search of the officer’s phone or email records would turn up communications with the person of interest.
The trial continues Thursday.
