BURST
The Vancouver Police Department have arrested a man they suspect confined, sexually assaulted and threatened a woman in the Downtown Eastside earlier this month.
That man, Mark Edward Grant, was acquitted in 2017 after being charged in 2007 for the 1984 abduction and murder of Winnipeg teenager Candace Derksen.
VPD spokesperson Const. Darren Wong said police were called to a residential building close to the corner of East Hastings Street and Columbia Street at 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 8 with a report that a woman in her 60s had been sexually assaulted in the building.
“Following an investigation, the suspect was taken into custody by Vancouver police,” Wong said on Wednesday.
“Mark Edward Grant, 62, has been charged with one count of unlawful confinement, one count of sexual assault with a weapon, one count of assault with a weapon, and one count of uttering threats.”
Wong said Grant is in custody awaiting a bail hearing.
Derksen went missing on Nov. 30, 1984 on her way home from school in Winnipeg. Her frozen and bound body was found six weeks later in a shed not far from her home. She died of hypothermia as a result of exposure. There were no signs of a struggle or of a sexual assault.
Grant was arrested in 2007, based on DNA evidence found on twine used to bind Derksen’s hands, and charged with second-degree murder.
Grant, who has a long criminal record, including sexual assaults, was found guilty in 2011.
That verdict, however, was overturned after an appeal based in part on jurors not hearing of an unknown alternate suspect — because another schoolgirl was also found tied up in the city while Grant was in custody on another matter.
In 2017, another trial was held and Grant was acquitted, after spending a decade behind bars. At that time, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Karen Simonsen said the DNA testing and conclusions used to convict Grant were “fraught with difficulty” and that a witness was unreliable.
Grant is suing the Manitoba government for wrongful conviction, wanting $8.5 million.
According to The Canadian Press, Grant has a court appearance in Vancouver set for Jan. 28.