WARNING: This story contains details of violence.
As a lawyer prepared to play an audio recording that captured some of the last minutes of his daughter’s life, Darris Dobersheck and his wife Hazel got up and quietly left the courtroom.
“I was given warning, that it wasn’t good, that it was a gruesome situation,” he said outside court on Tuesday.
“No good can come of hearing the last words of my daughter, or the last sounds of my daughter.”
His daughter Danielle Dobersheck was brutally beaten and killed in a motel room in Melfort, Sask., on March 10, 2024. She was 30 years old and a mother of three.
Her ex-partner Cody Chubey, 38, is on trial at Melfort Court of King’s Bench, charged with first-degree murder in her death.
Chubey and Dobersheck had been in a long-term relationship, but Dobersheck had left him and was moving on with her life, her family said.
However, that night, the two stayed together at the Carra Valla Inn.
In the room next door, a couple from B.C. was trying to sleep after attending an awards dinner for the Melfort Mustangs — the hockey team their son was playing on.
Garth and Donelle Olafson each testified separately on Tuesday. They both said they were awakened around 1 or 2 a.m. by the sounds of people arriving in the room next door. They heard partying sounds, but also arguing.
Danielle Dobersheck died in Room 33 at the Carra Valla Inn in Melfort on March 10, 2024. Donelle and Garth Olafson were staying next door in Room 34 that night. (Hannah Spray/CBC)
Later, the arguing turned physical, and Garth said he could hear a man beating up a woman.
They called the police. The first call was logged at 4:37 a.m. CST, with Donelle asking for a welfare check on the woman in the room next door. The dispatcher said she would send officers.
On Monday, court heard from the two officers who were dispatched. They were both on call, as there are no RCMP on active duty at that hour in Melfort, so they both were woken up from their sleep and had to get up, drive to the detachment, get their gear and take a cruiser to the motel.
They didn’t arrive at the motel until 5:05 a.m.
While Garth stood anxiously by the window, watching for the police to come, Donelle used her cellphone to record two videos that captured the audio coming from the room next door.
As she testified about what happened that night, Donelle was visibly upset on the stand, crying and wiping her eyes.
Danielle Dobersheck died on March 10, 2024, in Melfort. (Danielle Dobersheck/Facebook)
The audio captured sounds of a man yelling and a woman screaming.
It was difficult to make out many of the words, but at one point, the man said, “I’ll make your face like a f–king balloon and I’ll kill you.”
Garth said he heard the man tell the woman to go to the bathroom and clean herself up, but then it sounded like the man was angry that he couldn’t find his phone and there were noises near the bathroom area, banging and “a lot of commotion.”
At 4:56 a.m., the Olafsons called the police dispatch again and said they’d been listening to a man beat up a woman for 20 minutes. The dispatcher took their information and said she would pass it along to the officers.
After playing a recording of that call, Crown prosecutor Jennifer Souter asked Donelle if it accurately represented what had happened.
“I sound way too calm for what was happening,” Donelle responded. “I feel I was more frightened inside than what that call sounds.”
When the officers arrived 10 minutes later, Chubey let them into his motel room, which was covered in blood. Police found Danielle Dobersheck dead in the bathtub.
Chubey’s arrest
The final Crown witness on Tuesday was RCMP Const. Tanner Maynard. He was not on duty or on call on the morning of March 10, 2024, but was called in as backup.
After the other officers had arrived at the motel at 5:05 a.m., they arrested Chubey and drove him to the detachment.
Cody Chubey leaves Melfort Court of King’s Bench on Monday, June 8, 2026. He is on trial for first-degree murder in the death of his ex-partner Danielle Dobersheck on March 10, 2024. (Hannah Spray/CBC)
Maynard testified about how he “processed” Chubey at the RCMP detachment before putting him into cells.
That included seizing Chubey’s clothing as evidence and asking him some questions, such as his address and date of birth.
The interaction was all captured on video and audio starting at 5:26 a.m. The audio was played in court on Tuesday.
Maynard asked Chubey if he had any drugs or alcohol in his system, and Chubey said yes to alcohol and no to drugs.
Chubey said he had had his last drink about 20 minutes earlier.
Souter asked about why those questions are asked, and Maynard explained it’s standard to ask about people’s health, to establish a baseline for when they were taken into custody, in case any issues arise.
He filled out an intake form and on it, indicated that Chubey’s balance was “fair,” his speech was “slurred” and that he appeared “alert.”
When asked about what opinion he formed about Chubey’s sobriety, Maynard said “definitely in my opinion” Chubey wasn’t OK to drive, but that “he is still able to answer questions, form thoughts, provide me all the answers to the questions that I was posing to him.”
Autopsy report filed
At the start of the trial, the Crown and defence agreed to file some items by consent, without the need to call all the planned witnesses to testify.
That included the autopsy report, forensic reports, a bloodstain pattern analysis and photograph booklets.
According to the autopsy, Danielle Dobersheck died of blunt force trauma to the head. There were also signs of trauma on her neck, shoulder, chest, abdomen, and both her hands and both her feet.
A forensic science and identification services laboratory report said her blood was found on multiple objects in the motel room, including a lamp, ashtray, alarm clock and snow shovel.
The bloodstain pattern analysis report documented blood spatter on multiple walls and bloodstains “all over” the carpet.
The bathroom had blood all over the floor, and “thousands” of spatter stains in multiple directions on the tub surround and walls around the tub.
The Crown said she expects to finish calling witnesses by the end of the day on Wednesday.
Defence lawyer Peter Abrametz has indicated he will be asking for an adjournment after that, before the defence calls any potential evidence.
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. If you’re affected by family or intimate partner violence, you can look for help through crisis lines and local support services.