Charges laid in 1994 murder of 10-year-old Marie-Chantale Desjardins
Advanced forensic biology methods helped solve 29-year-old case, police say
Quebec provincial police declared the decades-old murder of 10-year-old Marie-Chantale Desjardins solved on Tuesday, saying advanced forensic biology methods have resulted in a murder charge for a 61-year-old inmate of a prison north of Mont-Tremblant, Que.
Réal Courtemanche, 61, was arrested this morning at La Macaza Institution, a federal medium-security prison, and was charged with first-degree murder today in a court in Saint-Jérôme, Que.
Desjardins was last seen alive leaving a friend's house in Sainte-Thérèse, a suburb on Montreal's north shore, on July 16, 1994. Her body was found four days later in the neighbouring town of Rosemère, in a wooded area behind the Place Rosemère shopping centre.
The disappearance and tragic outcome was front-page news at the time, transfixing the province and country — but the investigation went cold.
Sylvie Desjardins, Marie-Chantale's mother, was at the courthouse for Courtemanche's brief appearance. Crown prosecutor Steve Baribeau said today's events are "a difficult chapter" for Desjardins's family members, who in spite of getting answers 29 years after the girl's death, must now relive the tragedy.
"We're bringing all this back into their lives,' Baribeau said. "These are people who have shown great resilience throughout this process."
Investigators from the Sûreté du Québec's (SQ) unsolved crimes division worked with Quebec's provincial forensics lab to identify Courtemanche as the suspect. The Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de médecine légale du Québec, was also central to identifying the killer of Sharron Prior, a 16-year-old from Montreal's Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood whose murder in 1975 was resolved earlier this year.
Baribeau declined to offer further details about the evidence or technology used. "This is a 30-year-old case," he said. "And one of the concerns, clearly, is to make sure that our evidence is laid out comprehensively."
Courtemanche has been in and out of prison for decades for numerous crimes including assaults, thefts, drug cultivation and breach of conditions.
He was declared a dangerous offender by Quebec Court Judge Jacques Trudel in 2015. That decision followed a request by Crown prosecutors after a trial in which Courtemanche was convicted of several charges after kidnapping a woman in her 20s at knifepoint in Princeville, Que., in 2011.
In the document outlining the dangerous offender decision, Trudel noted that prior to the convictions for the Princeville kidnapping, Courtemanche had been convicted of 89 criminal offences since 1981, including 11 "involving the use of violence."
Trudel concluded that "only a sentence of incarceration of indeterminate duration" would adequately protect the public against the risk of Courtemanche committing further crimes.
The next court date has been set for Jan. 17, Baribeau said.
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With files from Radio-Canada