Gordon Seybold and Angelika Lange were best friends.
Seybold or “Gordie,” as Lange calls him, would have been 67 years old this year.
In 2008, his remains were found inside his torched, Ibex valley cabin, west of Whitehorse.
The trial of Christina Asp, who is charged with first-degree murder in connection with his death, is currently underway in Yukon Supreme Court.
Lange, Seybold’s former common-law wife, told the court Seybold’s cabin was always neat and tidy.
He was a man of routine, she said. He polished his jade coffee table every morning. And every day after eating his cereal he spent about an hour at the gym.
“He liked to keep fit,” Lange told Justice Leigh Gower and the 12 women and two men of the jury.
Seybold often stayed in town for lunch with friends and then returned to his cabin each night to read, Lange said. He also liked to listen to music, preferably classical.
Seybold always dressed nicely “by Yukon standards,” Lange said. “He had wool shirts he loved to wear.”
Crown lawyer Bonnie Macdonald asked Lange if Seybold was a “man of contradiction” – comparing this meticulousness with his penchant for marijuana.
Seybold smoked marijuana every day, Lange told the court.
He started dealing marijuana in the latter half of the 10 years she lived with him at the cabin.
He would buy it in pounds, split it up and sell it, she said.
Eventually, Seybold began growing cannabis on the property, a venture that grew significantly after he and Lange broke up.
At the time of his death, Seybold not only had a smaller growing operation in an old sauna, but he’d constructed a large garage in 2004 or 2005 for his business, said Robert Atkinson, a former neighbour, who also testified.
The garage had a large water tank and vents, he said. The windows were blacked out and blocked.
As well, Seybold had installed a security system on his property, including motion sensors in the driveway, he said.
If that sensor was tripped or if someone were entering the garage, an alarm would sound in Seybold’s cabin, said Lange.
Seybold didn’t have a lock on his cabin door, but he did keep a baseball bat beside his bed, she said.
While Lange moved out of the cabin in the early 1990s, the two remained friends, becoming closer again in the years before his death, she said.
Asp’s mother and her common-law husband lived in a smaller guest cabin on Seybold’s property, Lange testified.
Asp’s trial is scheduled to last about three months, with over 80 people on the witness list.
Contact Roxanne Stasyszyn at roxannes@yukon-news.com