On July 16, 1994, little Marie-Chantal Desjardins, aged 10, left a friend’s home on her bicycle in Sainte-Thérèse, a suburb of Montreal, and never returned home. It took the police almost 30 years to arrest a suspect for his murder, but since Tuesday, it has been done: they have arrested Réal Courtemanche.
The 61-year-old was already in prison for another crime. He has a very extensive criminal history.
It was therefore at La Macaza penitentiary that investigators from the Disappearances and Unresolved Files Division of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) arrested him.
He must appear Tuesday at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse to answer one count of first-degree murder.
The girl’s body was found four days after her disappearance in the woods located behind the Place Rosemère shopping center.
Despite the passage of time, the police never closed this file. The SQ indicates in a press release that it is thanks to the “careful and long-term work” of its investigators, in collaboration with the laboratory of forensic sciences and forensic medicine, and new methods in forensic biology, that the suspect was able to be identified and arrested.
To watch on video