Officer who overlooked Candace Derksen’s body during initial search apologizes

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This article was published 15/02/2017 (3471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A now-retired veteran Winnipeg police officer apologized to the mother of Candace Derksen for police not finding her weeks earlier.

Jim Cook was one of several police officers looking for the 13-year-old girl on Dec.30, 1984, a month after she went missing while walking home from Mennonite Brethren Collegiate in Elmwood.

Cook, who was using a snowmobile, was dressed in a snowmobile suit, boots, gloves, helmet and balaclava when he began searching Alsip’s Brick and Masonry just south of the Nairn Avenue Overpass.

Cook said he looked in the shed where Derksen’s body was later found but didn’t see her.

“What I remember is I was having a problem getting the door open (because of the) snow drifted against it,” he told the court on Wednesday.

“I could open it enough to get my head and shoulders inside.”

Cook admitted to defence counsel Saul Simmonds he did not see Derksen’s body.

“Had I found the body that would have been about an hour and a half into the search (that day). That would have ended it a lot earlier than Jan. 17, that’s for sure.”

Cook said when he rushed to the scene, when the body was found, detectives wouldn’t let him look inside the shed to see how he could have missed her.

“I was upset,” he said.

“It kind of made me wonder what team I was on at the time.”

And, just before leaving the witness stand, Cook turned to Derksen’s family and friends in the public gallery and said “with all due respect, Mrs. Derksen, I apologize for not finding her if she was there.”

Grant, 53, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

The trial continues next week.

Kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca