Beverley Rowbotham’s last surviving sibling will light a candle tonight, a sombre ritual every Oct. 24, when fond memories intertwine with anguish over her horrific slaying 25 years ago.

Barb Kilpatrick hasn’t lost hope that new information will emerge, or something will happen in her lifetime, to bring closure and justice for her sister.

“Bev has been dead for 25 years. That’s a very long time, and all the things she’s missed, all the family things — her boys growing up, all the new nephews and nieces — we’re just feeling really sad,” Kilpatrick, 76, told the Free Press . “I hold on to hope. Hope is everything.”

Rowbotham, 42, was killed in her family’s backyard in the RM of St. Andrews, police concluded, in one of Manitoba’s highest-profile homicides in recent memory.

Nearly eight

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