Son says he saw dad kill and bury mom in basement 34 years ago (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)

This adult son says he saw his father ALADAR STURCZ kill his mom and bury her in a basement 34 years ago. Since domestic violence and child abuse go together, it's no surprise that the kids were beaten and that the daughters were sexually abused.

http://www.globaltvbc.com/world/says+father+kill+bury+mother+basement/4412920/story.html

B.C. man says he saw father kill and bury mother in basement
Lora Grindlay, Postmedia News: Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Robert Sturcz says he is haunted by the memory of watching his father kill his mother 34 years ago and bury her in the basement of their home.

VANCOUVER — Vancouver police searching for human remains in the basement of a townhouse will uncover the body of Katherine Mary Brown who has been missing since 1977, her son said Wednesday.

Robert Sturcz, 37, said he watched his abusive father "choke her out" and bury her in the floor when he was a child, along with her purse containing her aboriginal status card and a note he wrote in crayon.

"Dad got me to write a confession in crayon. He wrapped it up in something that won't get wrecked by the soil," said Sturcz.

"(The note) said that it was my fault that my mom was dead. I wrote what he wanted me to write."

Vancouver police and a team of archeologists from Simon Fraser University have released few details about the excavation of the basement floor of the subsidized housing unit.

Const. Jana McGuinness would only say that a missing persons investigation was launched last fall when they received "credible" information into the disappearance of a woman last seen in 1977.

Sturcz, a former drug addict who has been clean for two years, said he remembers his father calling him down to the basement.

"I came down, he's choking her out and then I seen her collapse and he says, 'Watch her, make sure she doesn't move,'" he said.

"He had his fat fingers around her neck and squished it. That's what I saw."

He said he remembers another grey-haired man helping his dad dig through the concrete on the basement floor.

For the month that followed, his dad demanded that he keep his three sisters and two brothers from going into the basement.

The kids were told not to talk about their mom's disappearance and Sturcz is not sure anyone ever reported her missing.

"We were told not to talk about it. We were getting beat up all the time by our dad," he said, adding his siblings only learned about what he saw recently when contacted by the police.

He says there was "big-time arguing" between his parents over his mom seeing other men.

His dad Aladar Sturcz died in 1987 following a stroke, Sturcz said, not long before he was to face criminal charges for sexually assaulting at least one of his three daughters.

He was a survivor of a concentration camp in Hungary and immigrated to Canada.

As a teenager, Robert Sturcz turned to drugs and spent years on the Downtown Easide addicted to cocaine and getting in trouble with the law.

"I was medicating myself with drugs for many years but now I don't medicate myself no more," he said.

Sturcz, who lives in Maple Ridge, B.C., and receives disability income assistance, said although he never told his brothers or sisters about his mom's death, he told numerous people in recent years.

"I went to the cops many years ago. They don't believe me. I was a junkie crackhead," he said.

"It felt like I told a lot of people. I told my probation officer, I told my doctor, I told my social worker, I told the cops, I even told the cops on the corner of the street. I would stop a cop and tell them."

It wasn't until he told Dave Dickson his story last fall that police began to believe him.

Dickson worked on the Downtown Eastside for 30 years, 28 years as a Vancouver police officer and two years as a community resource worker at the Lookout Society.

"When he sat down and came out with it, I said, 'Holy cow.' I took it to the police right away," Dickson said. "I believed it 100 per cent. I didn't think he was making it up."

Dickson said he is proud of Sturcz for making "huge efforts" to repair his life and he's waiting to hear that his mom's body has been recovered.

"I really want to say to Rob, 'Your mom didn't leave you. She didn't abandon you.' It's a bit of closure for him," said Dickson.

"Me and Dave Dickson, we both worked on it like Batman and Robin," Sturcz said.

Sturcz said finding his mother's body means the house will no longer be "haunted."

"I believe in ghosts . . . It will mean that my mom is buried and when I go to heaven I will see her," he said.

"I used to cry all the time. Now I got no more tears in my tear ducts."