Police keep potential evidence from cabin, home, vehicle, in Jennifer Hillier-Penney case
Items were taken from properties shared with Dean Penney, missing woman's estranged husband
The RCMP have been granted an extension to hold onto a piece of potential evidence taken from a family cabin, where Dean Penney says he was the evening his estranged wife went missing in November 2016.
Items taken from the family home in St. Anthony and a vehicle will also remain with the RCMP.
Last Thursday, the police went to Supreme Court in Corner Brook to ask Justice George Murphy to hold onto items considered potential evidence in the investigation into the disappearance, and suspected kidnapping and homicide of Jennifer Hillier-Penney, 38.
She went missing from her estranged husband's house in St. Anthony, on the Northern Peninsula, on Nov. 30, 2016.
An affidavit signed by RCMP Const. Christopher Pittman says the police seized one item from Dean Penney and Jennifer Hillier-Penney's cabin in Northwest Arm in December 2016.
Dean Penney has said he was duck hunting at his cabin the day Hillier-Penney went missing. However, he later told the Fifth Estate that he returned to his home in St. Anthony on Nov. 30, 2016, to retrieve his duck decoys.
The RCMP have not publicly named a suspect. Penney denies any involvement in her disappearance.
Sent to crime lab
The item that was taken from the cabin 45 minutes outside St. Anthony was sent to the RCMP National Forensic Laboratory in Ottawa in early 2017.
The results of the analysis, Pittman said, "led him to believe that the item may have evidentiary value."
In a separate affidavit, Pittman said the RCMP took numerous items from a vehicle in the weeks after her disappearance and that the police want to hold onto the pieces for further testing.
A list of unnamed items show just 15 items of more than 100 have been accepted and sent to the RCMP lab.
"I believe that the seized items are still required to be detained as the investigation of the disappearance of Jennifer Hillier-Penney is still ongoing," Pittman's affidavit says.
"The investigation is presently active and ongoing on a daily basis."
The forensic lab will only accept a certain number of items for analysis at a time, says his affidavit, and "further requests for exhibit analysis will be made as the investigation continues."
The third and final affidavit submits the same arguments about the importance of holding onto the items taken from the St. Anthony home.
Pittman's affidavit says at least some of the items — six unnamed items are noted in court documents — have evidentiary value.
"The exhibits seized could corroborate information gathered as the investigation continues, making both the information and exhibits more probative."
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With files from Troy Turner and Lindsay Bird