Update:
Pier Robotti’s sentencing has been delayed to April 18.
It was decided that he would be sentenced alongside his sister Grace Robotti on that date.
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Pier Robotti is scheduled to be sentenced this morning for his part in the 2015 killing of Roxanne Louie.
Robotti, who assisted his sister Grace in hiding Louie’s body Jan. 4, 2015, waived his right to jury trial and in March appeared before a judge alone on the charges of second degree murder and interference with a dead body.
He pleaded guilty to interference with a dead body and the second degree murder charge was stayed. Details of that court process were sealed until a jury came back with a decision on his sister’s trial. That happened Thursday night, when Grace Robotti was found guilty to second degree murder. The conviction comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years, although the jury who decided her fate recommended that she be eligible for bail in 10 years.
During that trial, Pier told jurors that he intervened when in a fight between his sister and the mother of her great grandson.
Louie, he told the court, was atop Grace and holding a crowbar.
He tackled her off, and they struggled on the floor. She, he told jurors, thrashed on the floor of the unlit room and he tried to subdue her by holding her arms.
He said he could hear his sister hitting her, but he didn’t know with what or how hard.
When Louie stopped moving he stood up to leave and put his hand in her blood. From there he knew serious happened, but he left the room nonetheless.
He told jurors he left the room to attend to the child and when he returned 30 minutes later, Louie was covered with a blanket and his sister was cleaning blood.
“When I first saw the scene I went outside and started chain smoking,” Pier said.
When his sister joined him outside, he told her to call the police. Instead, she asked him to hide Louie’s body, so she could have time to get the child’s business in order. In particular, she wanted to get the child in the custody of her daughter, his grandmother.
“She said ‘all I ask you to do … is get rid of the body. Take my car,’” Pier recalled Grace asking him.
He slid Louie’s body down a slope off a remote road in Naramata. It was caught on some shrubbery and Pier followed it down, crossed Louie’s arms over her chest. He then offered some words.
“You’re with your elders now,” he recalled telling her for jurors. “Your son’s here and you can look down on them.”
He then went home, and cared for the child while Grace continued on with what she was doing. He told jurors he thought she’d only need two or three days, but it took nearly a week for her to complete what she wanted to get done.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong and I’d be doing some time for it,” he told jurors.