Friday marked five years to the day since the last time anyone saw Kimberlee Kasatkin alive.
The 41-year-old mother of two vanished in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 26, 2016. Her partner and father of her children, Christopher Franz Bettocchi, is accused of murdering her.
“It’s been tough because it’s been five years since Kim went missing with no answers,” Kasatkin’s brother Jason Grafstrom told Global News.
“In the beginning, just living in Canada, you think justice is going to be served, there will be some kind of resolution, but five years later we’ve pretty much had absolutely no answers on anything other than the fact that she’s not coming back and that we can’t expect any kind of answers any time soon.”
Bettocchi remains a fugitive, and Kasatkin’s mother Kathy told Global News his lawyer has asked a judge to vacate his arrest warrant because he is sick.
Kimberlee’s body has never been found. She was last seen in surveillance video showing the couple had returned to their home the evening of Nov. 26, the last time police documents say she was seen alive.
Surveillance video recorded the following day shows Bettocchi dragging a large bag he could barely lift to his vehicle in an underground parkade. A Peruvian court has heard Kimberlee’s body was suspected to be inside.
Bettocchi has consistently maintained his innocence, and has stated the bag contained camping gear.
He remains charged with femicide — the murder of a woman, under Peruvian law. Kathy told Global News she’s been assured by Interpol that his case remains active. However, he cannot be tried until he presents himself or is arrested.
“I really want to have faith that they are looking,” she said.
Kathy and her husband Al have spent their retirement savings searching for the truth and fighting for access to the children, who are now eight and 11 years old.
The family has had little recent contact with Kimberlee’s children, who remain in the care of their grandmother on Bettocchi’s side, she added.
“The kids will look into and they’re going to find out their father wasn’t out there looking for their mother like their grandmother told them,” she said.
“They’re going to find out through all of this that he’s not away working somewhere, he’s been hiding because he’s not man enough to stand up and prove his innocence that he claims is so easily proven.”
She said while she is losing hope there will be justice for her daughter, she retains hope they’ll be able to reconnect with the kids one day.
“Our family is incomplete without all of our grandchildren. They have a family here that loves them so much,” she said.
“We miss the picnics in the summertime in the backyard with them, we miss going sledding with them. We love them unconditionally, and we want them to come back, we want to have a relationship with them, but we’re not even allowed to Skype with them.”
Grafstrom said he remains optimistic there will be closure in his sister’s case, though hope fades a little with every year that passes.
“I do have a tiny bit of faith still, you want to hold onto that hope that something will happen — it’s a small, small amount of faith,” he said.
“I don’t want to completely give up on getting the justice for Kim, but as time goes on it kind of diminishes a little bit.”