Retrial in slaying of Candace Derksen will focus on DNA

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2017 (3220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

wfpvideo:8QWwNQze:wfpvideo

The second trial of a man once convicted of killing 13-year-old Candace Derksen began Monday with a promised focus on DNA evidence.

Mark Edward Grant again pleaded not guilty Monday to second-degree murder as the retrial got underway in front of Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Karen Simonsen. Grant was convicted of killing Candace in 2011, but the Manitoba Court of Appeal in 2013 ruled the trial judge erred in not allowing the jury to hear evidence that could have pointed to a different suspect, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015.

At the end of the day, Candace’s family remains “emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually convinced,” that Grant is responsible for Candace’s death.

“If we’re wrong, we want to be told and shown,” her mother, Wilma Derksen, said after Day 1 of the retrial. 

Crown attorney Brent Davidson presented an overview of what the judge can expect to hear over the course of the roughly six-week trial, including the three types of DNA analyses conducted as part of the investigation that pointed to Grant as a suspect and the ways in which police obtained samples of his DNA. The police officers who were involved in the investigation and one of the analysts who examined the DNA are set to testify later in the trial. 

Davidson told court the Crown believes Grant’s guilt is the “only rational” conclusion to be drawn after all of the evidence is before the court.

Nearly 32 years to the day her daughter’s body was found frozen and bound in a shed a few blocks from their Elmwood home, Wilma Derksen sat in court with her family, taking notes on a thick blue steno pad. Outside the courtroom, she said writing is how she processes the evidence she’s now hearing for a second time — she also plans to blog her account of the trial.

“We’ve been through it all and it just feels so clear cut,” she said. “It wasn’t as emotional.”

She said she considers it a success that her family is juggling schedules and making time to be present at the retrial — their busy lives are a signal they didn’t “dissolve into trauma” in the past three decades, she said. 

But it doesn’t take much for her mind to return to the day Candace went missing, memories surfacing of a teen who seemed happy talking to her mom on the phone after school because the boy she had a crush on had just playfully tossed some snow at her. Men tended to notice Candace when she walked into a room, even at 13, Derksen says now. 

“I’m not surprised she got noticed, and that was kind of my fear.”

David Wiebe, one of the last to see Candace alive on Nov. 30, 1984, was first to take the stand Monday. He recounted how he saw Candace on the phone after school that day and threw snow at her. He was about 15 at the time and admittedly had a bit of a crush on her. They chatted briefly, and she said she was going to walk a few blocks home. He remembered saying he’d drive her, if only he had his driver’s licence. He couldn’t walk with her, he said, because he was on his way to a driver’s-ed course.

Later that evening, he found out from Candace’s mother that she never made it home. Police didn’t tell him directly at the time, he said in response to lawyers’ questions during his testimony, but he would be considered a suspect in the investigation. He gave police hair samples, and later a blood sample, to help with the investigation. He also took a polygraph test in 2007. 

Defence lawyer Saul Simmonds’ cross-examination of Wiebe focused on the time that has elapsed since Candace’s death, which Wiebe agreed meant some details could have been lost from memory, and the DNA samples police collected from him. Wiebe said he was willing to give them whatever they requested because he had nothing to hide.

Court also heard Monday morning from Frank Alsip, who in 1984 was the general manager for a construction supply company on whose property Candace’s body was discovered on Jan. 17, 1985. 

All of the witnesses called to the stand on Monday – Wiebe, Alsip and retired Winnipeg Police Service officers Gilbert Vance Clarke, Derek Blackman-Shaw and William Keith Cahoon – had previously testified during the first trial, so hearing their evidence felt very much like a “rerun,” albeit one more tuned into legal nuances for Wilma Derksen.

During cross-examination of the witnesses, the defence team focused on a familiar line of questioning: DNA protocol, whose DNA may have been present inside the shed where Candace’s body was found and whether anyone may have entered the shed before police arrived.

“You didn’t have DNA protocols in place in 1985, correct?” Simmonds asked retired officer Blackman-Shaw, who confirmed there were none.

Defence lawyers questioned each witness about whether police asked them to provide samples of their DNA to help with the investigation, establishing only Wiebe had been asked to do so. The other witnesses, who showed up on scene shortly after the discovery of Candace’s body, were all asked – 32 years later – whether they could recall whether they had sneezed, coughed, deposited saliva or dry flakes of skin within the shed while they were confirming the presence of a dead body. All agreed they couldn’t say for certain.

Once again, questions were raised about what Candace was wearing when her body was found. Alsip testified he saw a parka covering the body when he looked in the shed prior to calling police. But Blackman-Shaw, one of two officers first called to the scene, said he focused on her clothing when he arrived. He remembered her wearing a maroon “club jacket” with a hooded sweatshirt underneath. Her hands and feet were bound with twine, and a layer of frost had crystallized on her body, acting patrol Sgt. Cahoon testified. That detail was particularly difficult for Wilma Derksen to hear repeated.

Still, she said after court was adjourned that parts of Wiebe’s testimony brought back happy memories of Candace. Her mother had known about Candace’s secret crush on Wiebe back then, and the feeling was mutual, according to his testimony. If Candace had returned home that night, Wilma said she felt sure she would’ve gossiped about him with her friends. Instead, seeing him on the stand again Monday brought back “the awareness of time, and the what-ifs,” Wilma said.

Grant’s second-degree murder conviction was overturned after the first trial because the trial judge didn’t allow jurors to hear evidence the defence argued could have pointed to a different suspect in a similar abduction case that happened while Grant, a convicted sex offender, was behind bars.

In that case, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly abducted, bound with rope and left in an abandoned railway boxcar in the same area of the city, less than a year after Candace disappeared.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Tweets by thatkatiemay