Judge in Grant retrial must decide on evidence pointing to unknown suspect

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This article was published 21/02/2017 (3165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a prominent retrial winds down in the 1984 slaying of 13-year-old Candace Derksen, a judge must decide whether to consider evidence that the accused argues could point to an unknown suspect.

The Crown said Tuesday it would not contest the admissibility of much of the defence’s evidence for its third-party unknown suspect application, arguing it was the reason the new second-degree murder trial against Mark Edward Grant is proceeding. But Crown attorney Brent Davidson said Justice Karen Simonsen must weigh all of the evidence carefully before making a decision.

Grant, 53, is accused of leaving Candace to freeze to death in a lumber-yard shed, where she was found tied at the wrists and ankles nearly two months after she went missing on her way home from school on Nov. 30, 1984. He was convicted after a trial in 2011of killing her, but that second-degree murder conviction was thrown out after the Manitoba Court of Appeal, and later the Supreme Court, ruled the jury that convicted Grant should have been allowed to hear evidence about a second alleged kidnapping victim who reported her experience to police while Grant was in custody on another matter. The victim recanted the reported kidapping during a preliminary inquiry leading up to the first trial, but on the stand again earlier this month she said she had been pressured by police and Crown attorneys who didn’t believe her story.

The trial has heard about the similarities between Candace’s disappearance and the subsequent reported kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl, which is alleged to have happened in September 1985 while Grant was in police custody. Both cases involved girls who went missing on their way home from school and were allegedly taken to sites within 1.5 kilometres of each other near the rail tracks in Elmwood. The same brand of chewing gum was found at both crime scenes. Candace was found dead in a shed, bound with twine, her head uncovered, while the other girl was found alive in a boxcar, tied up with plastic tubing that came from her own school, with a plastic bag over her head. The only fingerprints from the boxcar that resulted in a readable profile belonged to the alleged victim, and the Crown takes the position the incident never happened.

Other evidence introduced by Grant’s defence team to support its unknown suspect theory include letters written to CJOB in late 1987 by someone who “connects themselves to the Derksen matter,” and claims to know the teen was not sexually assaulted before she died, defence lawyer Saul Simmonds argued. But the Crown said it was already public knowledge no sexual assault took place, citing a Free Press article from March 1985 that said as much.

Defence lawyer Kristofer Advent told the judge Tuesday she should still consider the letters admissible but that she should put “very low weight” on them.

The trial continues with closing arguments expected this week.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay