Grace Robotti

I do not do a lot of cases that do not take place in the United States because to be fair I am not up on International Law. When it comes to America I can tell you what charges are more serious than others. For instance, first degree murder would be the most serious charge one could face, whereas the charge of manslaughter would fall further down. However, based on comments I found on articles pertaining to this case I was given the impression that in British Columbia it is exactly opposite. I attempted to confirm this but I was unable to do so. Normally I may have just decided to scrap the case at that point but I find this case intriguing in many ways and so I continued.

On January 4, 2015 twenty-six year old Roxanne Louie went “missing.” Roxanne lived in Vancouver British Columbia but she and her three year old son had gone to visit Grace Robotti in Pentiction. Roxanne was the ex-girlfriend of Grace's grandson. Interestingly the grandson's name was never given in all of the articles that I read. Roxanne was expected to return to Vancouver the following day but she never did.

It is not clear who reported Roxanne missing, but it may in fact have been Grace herself. An investigation was launched and while I was not able to determine what information had been gathered the prosecutors, or The Crown as they call it there, would later say that all roads were leading to Grace and the reason that both she and her brother went to the authorities a week after Roxanne was reported missing and confessed to her murder was because she was going to be arrested soon. But again it seemed unclear as to just what evidence the investigators had uncovered to make them believe this sixty something year old woman was a murderer.

Grace's brother Pier (aka Peter) pleaded guilty to “indignity to a body,” which is basically tampering with evidence in American terms or abuse of a corpse. His sentencing was held off, at least from the public until after Grace took her case to trial. It was later that it was learned that Pier was given a twenty-seven month sentence for his plea.

So, what exactly happened that caused this great-grandmother to murder the mother of her great-grandson? Well, I am unsure that the truth to that answer will ever be known. What The Crown did know was that Roxanne Louie had been hit at least twenty-six times with a crowbar and that had caused her death. Grace would claim self defense and would take the stand at her trial. It seems that while she would tell her story as to what happened on that January day she could not stop herself from degrading the victim even more.

The one thing it seems that everyone seemed to agree upon was that Roxanne was not doing things, as far as raising her child, as Grace thought she should have been. Allegedly the two women saw things differently when it came to raising the young boy. When Grace was on the stand she described Roxanne as “difficult, naive, dramatic, immature, narcissistic and unstable.” She claimed that she and Roxanne often argued on how to carry, feed and even care for her child. According to Grace, just such an argument had ensued on that night and Roxanne had first picked up the crowbar and threw it in Grace's direction. Roxanne again allegedly got the crowbar and began swinging it and this little old woman wrestled it away from her. During this time Pier had showed up at the home, as the argument continued to be violent and Roxanne struggled, Pier admitted to holding her down as Grace continually struck her with the crowbar. The fact that they both seemingly admitted that Pier held her down kind of ruled out her case for self defense in my opinion. And all of this was done while Roxanne's three year old son was just in the next room.

According to both Grace and Pier it was Pier who immediately said they should call the authorities but Grace insisted that they wait. Not only did Grace apparently not approve of Roxanne caring for the child, it seems she did not care for Roxanne's family. She told Pier she wanted to secure the child's future with their family before reporting anything. Grace immediately began to clean up the blood in the home and eventually convinced Pier to help her by disposing of the body. He did so in a wooded area not far away. Then apparently a missing person report was filed and the two attempted to go on as normal.

At her trial it was said that Grace did not have any family or friends present for support. A few members, including her daughter, Danielle, were called to testify but beyond that it was said no family member appeared in court. When Danielle testified she claimed that initially she knew nothing more than the fact that Roxanne was missing. Danielle spoke to her mother every day on the phone and claimed that the first few days after Roxanne was missing her mother appeared to sound strange on the phone but she thought little of it. A few days after that Grace went to Danielle's home which was apparently a distance away but not completely unusual. She did claim that she was concerned at her mother's behavior however as “she was spaced out and glazed over.... she was not herself at all. It was like she wasn't even present.” Danielle claims that around midnight on the night before Grace and Pier would go to authorities her mother woke her up and told her what had happened to Roxanne. Now it was not completely clear exactly what Grace told Danielle for two reasons, one, I did not see a direct quote from Danielle in the articles I read, other than to say it was an “accident.” Secondly, according to Danielle's testimony after beginning to hear the story from her mother, she herself went into shock I stated she could not related everything her mother told her as she really could not remember. Whether this is true or not is only for Danielle to decide.

As I said, the following day Grace and Pier, apparently along with their lawyers turned themselves into the police and confessed to the crime. It seems that they also led authorities to Roxanne's body. Exactly when her trial began is unclear. One article I read stated that it “began in Pentiction, but was moved to Kelowna in 2016.” Her conviction came through on April of 2017. Personally I have never heard of such a thing and I likely could have gotten to the bottom of it if I wanted to study International Law, so if any readers can explain some of this it would be great!

At any rate, as I stated earlier Grace testified in her own defense, telling the story of the argument that allegedly occurred between the two women and her version of what transpired before, during and after. She did admit that Pier had tried to convince her at least twice to call the police but stated she did not want to do so because she did not want her great-grandson to go to Roxanne's family. Two long statements she made on the stand stood out to me and I want to post them here because in my opinion they tell us nearly everything we need to know about Grace Robotti....

“I was driving her everywhere, bringing her groceries.

She stayed over at my house, I cleaned her apartment,

painted her apartment, unplugged the sink, changed

light bulbs. She just seemed to need a lot of that sort

of help a lot.”

“There was a lot of drama, I started to think there was

more going on than just being emotional....

constantly blaming other people for things not going her

way. Not taking any responsibility for herself. She

was projecting stuff she was doing onto other people.”

First I feel as if these comments made were rehearsed due to their wording, and their length. These went along with the comments about her being narcissistic and unstable. I got the impression that Grace, likely with the help of her attorney, knew that her story was not going to ring very true when they took into account that both she and Pier admitted that he had held Roxanne down as Grace hit her with the crowbar. She had to demean Roxanne; she had to make the jury believe that this woman, who was forty years her junior was mentally unstable and unfit as a mother. She had to explain why she had so many arguments with Roxanne about the care of her own child. In my opinion however, her statements not only did not help her, they harmed her case. By stating all the things she “had” to do for Roxanne she gave the impression that she (Grace) was a very controlling person and that while no one can really say just what type of person or parent Roxanne was, this seemed to be more about Roxanne not doing things the way Grace wanted.

In the end, after her conviction, Grace was sentenced to life without parole for ten years for second degree murder plus an additional twenty-seven months for the same charge Pier faced, “indignity to a body.” Roxanne's family was very upset at the sentence she received. Her uncle was quoted as saying...”To me, I guess this is a lesson in 'Murder 101'--- cover your tracks, go with a lawyer to turn yourself in and get as light a sentence as possible.”

It was never very clear exactly which family Roxanne's son ended up with. Grace had indicated that she had wanted her daughter to get him, hence the reason she did not go to the police immediately. There was no word on why the boys father would not have automatically gotten him or where he even was in the picture. In the end he may have ended up with Roxanne's family... who knows.

This seemed to me to be one of those cases where there was a matriarch in the family who attempted to control everyone and when things did not go the way she expected she fought back. Oftentimes these types of people initially come off as simply being “helpful” and it is not until time goes by that one realizes they have been not only manipulated but all the “help” they received would be used against them. Even at her trial Grace had to let the jury know just how much she had helped Roxanne and even all the little things she did for her. She needed the recognition. She needed Roxanne to pay her back... not in monetary value but in respect and by obeying her every wish. I suspect that Roxanne was not the first person who had come under Graces' spell, nor was she the first one to realize too late that she had. She may however have been the first one to seriously challenge Grace. She made a statement at her trial that she had never been in a physical fight before. This is probably true because I see Grace as the type that ruled with her mouth and not her fists.