Trial turns to ‘striking’ similarities

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This article was published 17/01/2017 (3219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thirty-two years to the day after 13-year-old Candace Derksen was found dead, defence lawyers for her accused killer say evidence may point to a different suspect.

Mark Edward Grant has pleaded not guilty a second time to second-degree murder in Candace’s death. The teenager was found bound and frozen inside a plywood shed in Elmwood about six weeks after she went missing. Her body was discovered on Jan. 17, 1985.

But a separate reported kidnapping became the focus of the trial Tuesday, as defence lawyer Saul Simmonds raised questions about another alleged victim who reported being abducted and tied up in the same area several months after Candace’s body was found.

Simmonds questioned retired Winnipeg Police Service Sgt. Ronald Allan, who worked for the identification unit at the time, about his involvement in the second investigation. In that case, a 12-year-old girl reported she had been walking home from school on a Friday afternoon in September 1985 when a man pulled her into a car and took her to the CP railyard about 1.6 kilometres from where Candace’s body was found. She told police he put her in an empty boxcar, tied her up with plastic tubing and put a plastic shopping bag over her head. There were no allegations of sexual assault.

A passerby rescued her when she heard the girl screaming. Grant was in police custody at the time the abduction was reported to have happened.

Simmonds zeroed in on what he described as “striking” similarities between the two cases, down to the same brand of chewing gum found at both scenes.

Allan confirmed he had investigated both cases and was aware of “some similarities” between them.

“There was similarities. I wouldn’t say there were several or many, but there were some,” Allan said.

Under voir-dire questioning from the Crown, Allan said the only fingerprints recovered from the boxcar scene belonged to the alleged victim.

He said police were able to find the same type of plastic tubing at Valley Gardens School, where it was being installed at the time.

“Any similarities would be irrelevant if (the 12-year-old alleged victim) took the position the incident never happened?” Crown attorney Brent Davidson asked.

Allan was prevented from answering the question because of legal arguments from the defence.

It will be up to Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Karen Simonsen to decide whether the testimony about the separate reported kidnapping will be admissible in the trial — meaning whether she’ll consider it before reaching a verdict.

Grant was previously convicted of second-degree murder in Candace’s death, but the conviction was overturned 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 allegedly happened while Grant was behind bars. In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision to overturn the conviction, and the Crown decided to go ahead with a new trial.

Allan was called to the scene with the identification unit the day Candace’s body was discovered.

During his testimony Tuesday, Allan recalled seeing her body “frozen stiff” and moving it with his partner for transport to the morgue.

He said they took care to try to preserve any traces of DNA on her body and seized many items found in the shed for further testing, but admitted under questioning from Simmonds forensic protocols back then were not as advanced as they are today.

Many of the defence team’s questions for Allan focused on what Simmonds suggested may have been “inadvertent” contamination of DNA evidence. Officers at the scene weren’t wearing masks and wouldn’t have been able to say for certain whether they had accidentally sneezed or scratched their face and left behind traces of saliva or dry skin, Simmonds suggested.

“It’s 1985, you’re in a position, sir, in which you don’t have DNA protocols,” Simmonds said during his cross-examination of Allan.

Officers were aware of the DNA significance of saliva, so they would’ve been careful, Allan said. They were also fingerprinted so their prints could be excluded from a crime scene if necessary.

“The white uniforms that they’re wearing today is not what we were wearing,” in the police identification unit back then, Allan acknowledged.

Allan was also questioned about several photographs he had taken of the scene. When comparing the photographs, Simmonds argued it appeared as though Candace’s jacket or her body had been moved.

“The scene itself had been altered in some fashion,” Simmonds suggested, saying he wasn’t suggesting it was done “in any way maliciously.”

Allan testified her body was not moved while police photographed the scene. When looking at the photos he agreed it appeared there had been some movement, but couldn’t say how it happened.

He testified Candace’s head and limbs were covered in paper bags before her body was transported to try to preserve any DNA evidence, including hair or fingernail scrapings.

After court adjourned for the day, Wilma Derksen, Candace’s mother, said while much of the trial so far has been familiar to her, the feeling of sitting in court exactly 32 years after her daughter was found dead was new. Candace’s presence remains after all these years, she said, the clanging of Grant’s leg irons audible as he made his way out of court out of sight behind her.

“It just feels right somehow, to be here and wrestle with it,” she said. 

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay

 

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