Canada - Candace Derksen, 13, abducted & murdered, Winnipeg, 13 Nov 1984

In the 32 years after a teen's abduction and death, her family has found strength in each other

CBC News • Kim Kaschor• Laura Glowacki

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Thirty-two years to the week since Candace was found, the Derksens continue to believe Grant is guilty.
"I resent it. I'm angry," said Wilma of the retrial. "Why do we have to go through this again? We were convinced the first time."
Grant has always denied killing Candace and won back his presumption of innocence after his successful appeal.
Now in his 50s, the Winnipeg man will be retried for Candace's murder, beginning Jan. 16.
DNA evidence was crucial to Grant's arrest in 2007. A forensic specialist called to testify by the Crown at his first trial said there was a one-in-50-million chance the DNA found on the twine used to tie Candace's limbs together belonged to anyone other than Grant.
After a jury found him guilty in 2011, Grant filed an appeal and two years later was granted a retrial. His defence lawyer put forward several grounds for appeal, arguing evidence that may have helped acquit Grant was withheld, regarding the abduction of another girl.
Nine months after Derksen's body was found, and while Grant was in custody, a crime similar to Derksen's abduction took place. Another girl was found tied up in a boxcar not too far from the shed where Derksen was discovered, using the same knots used on Derksen. No suspect has ever been charged in relation to the second abduction.
Grant's retrial is expected to include evidence of an unknown third party potentially involved in both cases.

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Candace Derksen and her little sister Odia Reimer (née Derksen) in 1980. (Derksen family)

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Three pubic hairs were found on or near Candace's body, although police have said she wasn't sexually assaulted. Four scalp hairs that appeared to have been lightly bleached near the roots were on her clothing. There is evidence Grant coloured his hair around the same time. DNA extracted from the twine used to tie her up was found to be a maternal match to Grant.

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Mark Edward Grant

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MsFacetious said:

Is there more detail somewhere on the 12 year old that makes it clear it was made up?

I'm totally open to the idea as I have personal experience with a kid making false allegations and I'd hate to think they have the wrong guy. (Not that he's any angel clearly.)

However what's in here doesn't sound easy for a 12 year old to pull off. Binding her hands with a plastic bag over her head? I'm not very coordinated admittedly but still. The gum wrapper is also a bit of a coincidence.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/girl-in-rail-car-told-eerie-tale-116524958.html

Horrible for Candace's family either way.

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The second trial for Mark Edward Grant, who is accused of killing 13-year-old Candace Derksen in the mid-1980s, began today in Winnipeg with testimony from the last person to see her alive — her former classmate.

David Wiebe, Candace's classmate at Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, was 15 at the time her body was found.

Wiebe said he and Candace had a snowball fight, said goodbye and then she began her walk home.

The second witness — an employee who found Candace's body — could not be called to testify Monday because he has died. Instead, the Crown read a statement written by him from 1985. It said he initially thought Candace was a doll when he discovered her, and that he then ran to get his boss and phoned police.

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Ontario Mom said:

The gum wrappers are a huge coincidence. It sounds more like it did actually happen and it traumatized her in a very deep way. Maybe she tried to convince herself she made it up? Still, it's unthinkable Candace's family has to go through yet another trial.

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The kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl nine months after Candace Derksen's body was found had "strikingly similar" characteristics, a defence lawyer argued in court on Tuesday.

Mark Edward Grant's defence lawyer, Saul Simmonds, pointed to similarities in the cases such as the day the girls went missing and how their hands and feet were bound. Simmonds argued the evidence from the second kidnapping, which happened while Grant was in police custody, may point to a different suspect.

Simmonds was questioning retired sergeant Ronald Allan, the only witness to speak on Day 2 of the retrial for the killing of Derksen. Allan was an investigator responsible for removing Candace's body and was the principal photographer at the crime scene.

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Earlier in the trial on Tuesday, Allan told the court that police officers placed paper bags on Candace Derksen's hands, feet and head to try to preserve evidence when they found the 13-year-old's body 32 years ago.

Back then, Allan acknowledged, police didn't have any DNA protocols and knew "very little" about the new forensic tool.

Simmonds continued to raise questions about whether officers may have inadvertently contaminated the crime scene.

He argued that Allan and his fellow officers could have accidentally deposited DNA evidence at the crime scene, whether through a runny nose, cough or a sneeze.

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A retired police officer testified today in the retrial for Candace Derksen's killing he "woke up in the middle of the night" two weeks ago recalling that his previous testimony was inaccurate.

Robert Parker was an identification officer with the Winnipeg Police Service in 1985. After a lengthy search, Candace Derksen, 13, was found dead on Jan. 17, 1985. She was found tied up inside a rarely used machine shed by employees at an industrial yard.

On Wednesday morning — the retrial's third day — Parker testified he woke up two weeks ago realizing he did not in fact "bag" the twine used to tie up Candace but in fact placed it in a box that had been previously used to store film.

"Quite honestly, what was bothering me the most is I was going over transcripts over previous testimony [and asking myself], 'Was I absolutely sure?,'" Parker said, referring to previous testimony that he would have bagged the twine.

He settled on the fact that he in fact put it in a photograph box, which he said was "very common" practice at the time.

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The twine Candace Derksen's body was bound with was tied with six unsophisticated knots and wrapped 10 times around the teen's wrists and ankles, according to testimony from a knot expert at Day 4 of Mark Grant's retrial for Candace's killing.

"It looked like a natural-fibre twine, two-strand, braided," Robert Chisnall told court Thursday.

Chisnall "felt" and studied the twine for several hours without wearing gloves, a mask or a hair net, he confirmed during the defence's cross-examination.

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The defence read from photocopies of letters from 1987 addressed to Peter Warren, who was then a radio host at the local media outlet CJOB. In one letter, Simmonds said the writer linked themselves to the Derksen case.

"I almost made love to her but lost my desire," one line in a letter read. "I have much anger inside me. I don't know why."

Burchill testified the general public was not made aware of the fact that no sexual contact was made with Candace — it was a detail strategically held back by police in case a suspect come forward.

The defence is suggesting the letters were written by another possible suspect.

Burchill testified the letter was later sent for fingerprinting.

Simmonds went on to ask Burchill if Terry Arnold, the prime suspect in the 1981 killing of Barbara Stoppel, was ever considered as a suspect in Candace's killing.

"There were a number of other people looked at as suspects, to which you had access to [their] DNA whether for inclusion or exclusion," Simmonds said.

Burchill said he could not recall if Arnold was in Winnipeg at the time of Candace's murder or was a person of interest.

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Details regarding the intricacies of DNA collection became so complex at the Candace Derksen retrial on Friday that at times, the judge had difficulty following the explanations and asked Mark Grant's defence lawyer to slow down.

Saul Simmonds, who is representing Grant — accused of the 1984 killing of 13-year-old Candace — continued his cross-examination of RCMP scientist Tod Christianson at the retrial's fifth day.

Christianson prepared the twine used to bind Candace's wrists and ankles, along with other items found at the scene where she was killed, for DNA testing.

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After a lengthy cross-examination, Simmonds raised the issue of possible contamination. He asked Christianson if he was wearing a mask when he was dealing with samples.

Christianson testified masks were not worn at the time.

"As careful as you are being you can potentially contaminate a sample," Simmonds concluded, and Christianson agreed.

Simmonds asked Christianson if handling exhibits with bare hands was a concern.

"It's obviously a concern," he told the court.

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Jonathan Lutz told court on Monday that he was tasked to review the unsolved case in 2006 and develop a standardized questionnaire to ask "a series of persons of interest."

It was the various hairs found at the crime scene that piqued the investigator's interest.

"They were suspicious," Lutz said. "[I'm] wondering why there is a pubic hair found on a deceased 13-year-old's body."

Lutz's questionnaire asked each person of interest for a voluntary DNA sample. His plan next would be to run comparisons between each individual's DNA and the hairs, among other evidence.

Grant completed the questionnaire in 2006 but declined to provide a DNA sample, Lutz said.

Grant's blood, however, was on file with the Winnipeg Police Service and Lutz obtained it with a warrant and had it sent to Molecular World, an independent lab, to see if there was any match.

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Simmonds continued to grill Lutz on the DNA samples obtained from other persons of interest.

Lutz testified that in May 2006, a sample was taken from a classmate of Candace's but he could not recall and did not have any record of it being sent to the lab for further testing.

Later in the afternoon the court entered a voir dire, a preliminary hearing over new evidence, where the defence pointed to the possibility of a "third party suspect."

Lutz was questioned about whether a Wrigley gum package found at the Derksen scene was re-tested along with a Wrigley gum pack found at a scene nine months later, where a 12-year-old girl was found alive, bound in a similar way.

Neither package was sent by him for testing, Lutz told court.

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Faced with the long unsolved murder of Candace Derksen, cold case investigators in 2006 developed a questionnaire to be put to “persons of interest,” court heard Monday.

The 12 question questionnaire asked respondents if they knew Derksen, why they thought somebody would kill her, if it was possible their DNA would be found at the murder scene and if they would be willing to take a polygraph test or provide a DNA sample, testified Insp. Jonathan Lutz.
Grant, one of several “persons of interest” identified by police, refused to provide a DNA sample to investigators, Lutz said.

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Derksen was found with dirt in her nose and on her chin, Markesteyn said.

“That would indicate to me that at sometime she was lying face down, which she was not at the time we came to the shed,” he said.

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A Winnipeg man who lived in Elmwood and was an acquaintance of Mark Grant's when Candace Derksen went missing testified Tuesday Grant was "always on the run."

The colour of Grant's hair at the time of Candace's disappearance was at the forefront of the defence's cross-examination.

Crockford told court Grant's natural hair colour was dark, but he dyed it blonde and orange on different occasions.

The defence asked if Grant changed the colour of his hair when he was "on the run," as Crockford had suggested in past statements to police.

"He was always on the run," Crockford said, adding he could not recall Grant's hair colour at the time of Candace's disappearance in 1984.

At one point, Crockford pointed at Grant in the prisoner's box and said, "If you didn't leave [Candace] for dead, I wouldn't be up here," adding it was something he heard that on the news last night.

Simmonds asked Crockford to focus on the questions and told him anything he saw on the news was not evidence.

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A retired Winnipeg police officer who worked in the youth division and Missing Persons Unit in 1984 testified about his investigation of an inspection pit at a CPR rail yard near Bury Street, while Candace was still missing.

George Felbel told the court he entered a pit with concrete walls and dirt floors where CPR police had uncovered grocery bags, a light, a wall heater and what appeared to be a makeshift bed.

"I love you Mark" and "Mark and Audrey" were scrawled on the walls in white chalk, Felbel testified.

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A senior scientist's qualifications and reliability were challenged at the Candace Derksen murder retrial Wednesday — and the defence even suggested she spoke publicly about solving the cold case while it was still before the courts.

"You were actually lecturing and telling people you solved this case by linking evidence to a single suspect," defence lawyer Saul Simmonds said to Arlene Lathi.

"No, I don't recall giving that information," Lathi told the court.

Lathi told court Wednesday she received DNA samples from other suspects, as well as from Grant's maternal siblings, and performed mitochondrial DNA tests — one of three kinds of DNA testing and a type unavailable to police in 2001 when evidence was originally tested — for RCMP to analyze.

She explained to court the step-by-step procedures involved in extracting mitochondrial DNA from the swab samples, purifying them and then copying them millions of times over to generate a DNA sequence or profile for each individual. The results were then forwarded to RCMP scientists to interpret and compare.

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The defence also raised questions about lab protocols, proficiency testing for lab employees and the protective gear worn to avoid contaminating the DNA Lathi was working with.

"Mitochondrial DNA is very susceptible to contamination," Simmonds asked Lathi to confirm. Lathi stopped short of agreeing but told court contamination is possible.

She explained she worked under a sterilized hood wearing a lab coat, gloves, glasses and a mask. She said proficiency testing was conducted internally and by a third-party organization, but could not confirm how often.

Simmonds also raised the issue of how "discerning" the results of mitochondrial DNA testing are because anyone with the same maternal lineage shares the same mitochondrial DNA profile, he said.

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