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20 year old case in Queensville, Ontario

 
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jane



Joined: 22 Sep 2002
Posts: 3225

PostPosted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:05 pm    Post subject: 20 year old case in Queensville, Ontario Reply with quote

This article appeared in the most recent edition of the local paper. Little Christine would have attended one of the schools I substitute at these days. What a horrendous experience for Christine's family and also the man who was wrongfully convicted of her rape and murder. The real killer still hasn't been found, 20 years later.
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fair use
from The Era Banner

Shock subsided, pain remains

TODAY MARKS 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF DISAPPEARANCE OF CHRISTINE JESSOP

Oct 3, 2004
Martin Derbyshire, Staff Writer

It was a horrific crime that first shocked Queensville and then a nation, becoming one of the most infamous cases of wrongful conviction in Canada's history.

Twenty years ago, Oct. 3, 1984, Christine Jessop -- the small, shy and innocent nine-year-old her mother called Chrissy -- was snatched from her home, raped, brutally murdered and dumped in a remote area near Sunderland.

Her body wasn't found until three months later.

Case still cold, page 2

Four months later, neighbour Guy Paul Morin was charged with her murder.

The next decade was spent in and out of courtrooms as Mr. Morin was wrongly convicted and finally cleared of the crime by the emergence of DNA evidence.

There has never been another conviction.

By the time it was all said and done, the Morin family had become victims themselves.

Investigators were forced to work with 10-year-old evidence.

Christine's mother Janet Jessop, who had returned home that night from the dentist with her son, Ken, to find little Chrissy missing, had a lifetime of questions and few answers.

No one was left unscathed.

"What I remember is that Halloween right after she went missing," said Sandra Dunel, a Queensville resident whose son was just seven at the time.

"No one went trick-or-treating that year. We had Halloween for the kids in the community centre. People were just petrified to let their kids out. We were paranoid. We had no idea who could have done it. We didn't know who to trust. If it happened once, it could happen again and it could be your kids. After that, Queensville was never the nice small village it used to be."

When Christine was found murdered, the eyes of the country quickly transfixed on the hamlet north of Newmarket.

For the next two decades, if anyone heard you were from Queensville, questions about Christine Jessop's murder were sure to come up, most residents say.

"We'll never forget," Mrs. Dunel said. "Nobody will let us."

Dan Rush went to school with Christine. The 29-year-old Richmond Hill firefighter remembers she borrowed an eraser from him the day she went missing.

Both their fathers were volunteer firefighters in Queensville.

"My mom was putting me to bed that night and asked me if I knew where Christine was because Mrs. Jessop had phoned the house," he said. "I had no idea."

Mr. Rush also remembers Halloween and the way his parents and every other Queensville parent changed how they were raising their children from that day forward.

"There was a real loss of trust," he said.

He may have left Queensville, but Queensville will never leave him. With two children of his own, Mr. Rush says he's extra cautious having been so close to such a hideous crime.

"It's part of my history," he said. "You can bet I'm watching my kids even closer because of it."

The other victims

Guy Paul Morin's mother, Ida Bell Morin, has the same birthday as Christine, Nov. 29.

"I was sad that Christine never shared it with me," said Mrs. Morin, who still lives in Queensville. "Christine's family suffered the loss of a dear daughter and for a decade the Morin family -- Alphonse and Ida, Raymond, Diane, Denise, Yvette, and Lisette -- suffered the loss and wrongful conviction of a son and brother."

Mrs. Morin always knew her son didn't kill Christine. At the time of his arrest, her biggest worry was the possibility of capital punishment and her son dying for a crime he didn't commit.

"The authorities chose to disbelieve, disregard, disrespect and distrust Guy Paul and his parents," she said. "There is no responsibility or accountability for the participants who imprisoned an innocent man for life in a federal penitentiary. In wrongful convictions in Canada the procedure is to sue our Queen. The taxpayers of the province pay the compensation. There is no responsibility, no accountability and no deterrent for the participants who continue to represent and serve our Queen. In other words, the participants continue to work as if nothing happened."

Mrs. Morin still thinks of the victims. Each and every one of them.

"The murder of Christine Jessop was a tragedy and a tragedy of errors for two families," she said. "The Morin family feel troubled that the person who killed Christine has not been found. In the USA, there was a case that took 30 years to bring the person to justice. I trust and pray, with the help of DNA, the day will come when Christine's killer will be found and there will be closure. Christine will always be remembered."

Holding out hope

"We may have lost a lot of hope, but there still is a possibility we can catch her killer," said Toronto Police Supt. Neale Tweedy, who headed up the task force investigating Christine's murder after Mr. Morin was exonerated. "Twenty years is a long time, but there's still a possibility. I'm hopeful still."

Hope lives on in the DNA sample taken from semen found on Christine's underwear when her body was discovered.

The same DNA sample that was used to clear Mr. Morin also cleared more than 325 other suspects with some connection to the family, the Queensville area or similar crimes over the three years the task force was running, Supt. Tweedy said.

"On about five occasions, we thought we were really close," he said. "It looked really, really good. We'd get our hopes up, get the blood sample and it would prove not to be the person. After a while, you just run out of reasons to suspect people."

The task force officially disbanded near the 13th anniversary of Christine's murder, but Supt. Tweedy said he has kept a close eye on the case.

Over the past seven years, another eight DNA samples have been checked. None matched.

"It's been a frustrating exercise," Supt. Tweedy said. "My greatest fear is that the killer of Christine Jessop is in a federal penitentiary in another part of the country serving a life sentence and we'll never get a sample of his DNA to match up against ours. That's why we need changes to the national DNA databank legislation. There are some big gaps there."

Although Christine's killer could be long dead or long gone, Supt. Tweedy said the chances of catching him would be greatly increased if more convicts and suspects were forced to give up DNA samples.

"I'm not guaranteeing anything, but the odds would go up dramatically," he said. "People don't just wake up one day and rape and murder a nine-year-old girl. There's usually some history of similar behaviour. If we had DNA samples from everyone convicted and currently incarcerated of a similar crime, it would certainly increase our chances of finding the guy."

Moving on isn't easy

If she were alive to day, Christine would be less than two months from her 30th birthday.

But for the past 20 years, in the eyes of her mother, she has remained the same bright and beautiful nine-year-old girl she was the day she was killed.

"We always called her Skeeter-Deeter," she said. "Chrissy was neat, clean, quiet and really close with her mother. We were close. Some people find it hard to remember her voice, but not me. I'd almost like to see what she'd look like today, but I'm afraid. I really miss her now, as much as I ever have."

Christine wanted to be a veterinarian one day. She loved her dog, Freckles, and kept a pet frog in the basement. Mrs. Jessop said she was always playing in the cemetery behind the Jessops' house, bringing home flowers from the same graveyard where she is now buried.

"She was quite the little lady, always had to have things exactly the right way. Always cleaning the ashtrays right away. Her brother, maybe, thought she was a pain in the neck, but she would always say 'Mind your own business Kenny,' or 'Get away from me,' just like that," Mrs. Jessop said. "I'll still walk down the street with Kenny and say, 'Look at that little purple outfit. Wouldn't your sister love that?'"

The day she returned home to find her daughter missing, Mrs. Jessop remembers finding Freckles acting sheepish. She knew right away something was wrong.

"I just got that feeling in the pit of my stomach. We looked everywhere for her. I phoned all her friends," she said. "In those days, I thought you shouldn't call the police until you'd at least looked around a bit. After a while, I knew something had to be wrong and so we picked up the phone and called them."

When police charged Mr. Morin, she was convinced of his guilt. Later, when she learned of all the errors made by investigators, an overwhelming feeling of frustration settled in.

"We were all lied to," she said. "Of course, I feel bad for the Morins and what they had to go through. But what about Chrissy? People forget that my little girl was killed and we still don't know who did it."

These days, Mrs. Jessop lives in a small apartment in Keswick, struggling to make ends meet. She has spoken at schools about how to avoid becoming a victim and is dedicated to helping others deal with the aftermath of losing a child.

She knows how hard it can be.

"You can't replace a lost child and you can't put a dollar figure on them, but the victims of crime and the families deserve something," she said. "We got nothing. The Morins got $1.2 million. Someone stole my daughter, my family and we got nothing."

She still holds out some hope Christine's killer may one day be caught.

"We don't really know what happened to Chrissy. We have some idea but we don't know exactly and that's one of the hardest parts," she said. "People say I should move on, but you don't just move on. I hope they do catch him one day. I will have just have one question for him, why? I don't want him to lie, I know he will, but I just want him to tell me the truth. Why?"

------------------------

CASE STILL COLD

1983

Eight-year-old Christine Jessop moves to Queensville from Richmond Hill with her family.

OCT. 3, 1984

Christine arrives home from school at the Jessop family's Leslie Street farmhouse around 3:30 p.m. No one else is home. Her mother and brother are late returning from a dental appointment. She drops her knapsack and grabs a nickel to buy some gum at the corner store. Before she leaves, she calls a girlfriend to arrange a rendezvous to play with their Cabbage Patch dolls.

About 15 minutes later, she drops her bike in front of Queensville's general store, just 500 metres south of her home. She goes inside to buy gum, then pedals home. When her mother and brother arrive home at about 4:15 p.m., Christine is nowhere to be found.

DEC. 31, 1984

Nearly three months after hundreds of volunteers searched in vain in and around Queensville, Christine's remains are found by accident by a farmer and his children in a field near Sunderland, 56 kilometres from the Jessop home.

APRIL 22, 1985

Guy Paul Morin, Christine's neighbour, is charged with her murder. The accomplished musician is arrested, based on circumstantial evidence. Less than a year later, Mr. Morin is acquitted but the Supreme Court orders a retrial.

NOV. 4, 1990

Christine's remains are reburied in the Queensville cemetery, six days after they were exhumed. A second autopsy reveals numerous wounds that were missed during the first examination six years earlier, when only stab wounds to the ribs were found. This time, pathologists discover evidence of more serious stab wounds and attempts to saw through the neck and spine.

JULY 30, 1992

Mr. Morin is found guilty. It takes a jury eight days to decide Morin abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered his next-door neighbour. The defence appeals and Mr. Morin is released on $120,000 bail in February 1993. While awaiting his third trial, Mr. Morin quietly lives in Queensville, reporting to York Regional Police each week.

JAN. 23, 1995

Ten years after his first arrest, Mr. Morin is exonerated through DNA evidence. American scientists use an experimental method to prove semen found on Christine's underwear does not belong to Mr. Morin, excluding him as the killer. But the DNA sample doesn't help police catch the killer.

1998

A three-year task force investigating the killing is disbanded. More than 325 DNA samples were checked against the one found on Christine's underwear with no matches.

OCTOBER 2004

Over the past decade, investigators have checked only eight more DNA samples finding no matches. It has been 20 years since she was killed, but calls for changes to the national DNA databank raise the hopes of her family and investigators that the killer will one day be found.
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benn



Joined: 19 Sep 2002
Posts: 2136
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 7:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jane, I just posted today at "a haunting case," in Private Discussions, two separate news stories about men being arrested years after their crimes. What seems to be happening is that dna profiles are being collected from a lot of men in prison. When computers get a chance they can sometimes match the dna to old murder cases.

>>>http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2004/09/27/news/099new2.txt

Here is the man's name in case this url times out.

(snip) "Hirschfield was linked to the Davis murders via a DNA match made in August 2002." (snip) His full name is Richard J. Hirschfield, 55

I will just give the url of the second story.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/9441176p-10365322c.html

>>>Herman Hobbs<<<

benn
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