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When this news was
first reported, CBC did some streeters and more than half of
the people interviewed, while expressing relief added they hoped
the police had got the right man. After the shenanigans of Project
P, and so many people in Ontario framed by police, this is a
sensible response.
Holly suspect charged
'Forty days of investigative
work: That's what did it': Police to take days to search home
of Michael Briere; investigation 'far from over'
Saturday, June 21,
2003
TORONTO -- City police have
charged a Toronto man with the first-degree murder of a 10-year-old
girl, a case that sent a shiver of fear through families across
Canada's largest city.
Michael Briere, 35, a software
developer originally from Montreal, was arrested early yesterday
at his apartment, just steps from the spot where Holly Jones
was last seen on May 12. Her dismembered body was found in Lake
Ontario hours after she was abducted from her west-end Toronto
neighbourhood.
"There's a great relief
and there's a great deal of satisfaction," Toronto Police
Chief Julian Fantino said at a news conference announcing the
arrest. "But everything is sort of dulled by the obvious
loss of a young, defenceless child in most horrific circumstances."
The case led to new calls for
a national sex offender registry after police said about 200
sex offenders on Ontario's registry lived in or near Holly's
Bloor and Dundas neighbourhood.
Chief Fantino said investigators
do not believe Mr. Briere knew the dead girl, but would give
only the barest details of how the case unfolded. "Forty
days of intensive investigative work: that's what did it,"
he said.
He urged the media not to release
any photographs of the suspect, saying there were witnesses yet
to be interviewed and clues still being followed up.
"While a trail of evidence
led investigators to the accused ... this particular investigation
is far from over," he said.
Chief Fantino would not rule
out the possibility that Holly's killer had an accomplice. "We
are focussed on this individual right now, but certainly the
investigation is continuing. We'll have to wait and see how that
develops."
Police have never said whether
the child was sexually assaulted before she was killed and have
yet to recover all of her remains.
Holly was last seen about a
block from her house, walking home in broad daylight from a friend's
house on Perth Avenue.
.
When she went missing, police
and neighbourhood volunteers quickly launched an all-out search
of the area.
Police issued a provincewide
alert for the girl, but the next morning a man walking his dog
found her remains in a gym bag on Ward's Island in Lake Ontario.
More body parts were later
found washed up on another beach, near the grounds of the Canadian
National Exhibition.
"Holly became everyone's
child the moment she went missing," Chief Fantino said.
"We cannot return her
to her family, nor can we account for a crime beyond comprehension,
but hopefully this arrest will bring some closure to Holly's
family, friends and to the community as a whole."
Mr. Briere was arrested at
a grey three-storey building almost exactly halfway between Holly's
home on Sterling Road and the friend's house.
A neighbour said police took
two men into custody early yesterday morning, including Mr. Briere.
Police returned to the house
on Bloor Street West later in the day with a warrant and sealed
it off for a search that spokesmen said would likely take "several
days."
Neighbours gathered in small
groups watching from the edges of police barricades surrounding
the nondescript rowhouse.
"You feel guilty because
you feel like you should have done something," said Ryan
Oakley, who lives next door to Mr. Briere. "I feel better
now that there's been an arrest, but I wish it hadn't happened
here."
Mr. Oakley said police knocked
on his door shortly after Holly's disappearance requesting a
DNA sample and asking to see his bathroom. "They wanted
to know where I kept my cleaning supplies," he said. "It
was spooky."
He had not seen Mr. Briere
for some time but said the man was quiet and generally kept to
himself. "All the clichés are true," he said.
Kim Turmbull, who lives just
a few doors down from where Mr. Briere was arrested, said she
had often walked past him on the way to the convenience store,
accompanied by one or more of her four children.
"I've only seen him in
passing," she said, leaning against a police barricade and
staring up at the house. "There are some people you just
keep walking past."
Mr. Briere is expected to appear
in court today.
Vicky Lee Bolduc, his former
wife, told the National Post yesterday that he was brilliant,
but became obsessed with video games and horror movies.
She said her ex-husband was
a former bodybuilder, describing him as: "Not a huge guy,
but very strong."
His employer, the lab-testing
company MDS Inc., issued a statement yesterday to extend their
sympathies to the Jones family. "The metro Toronto police
informed us this morning that as a result of their investigations,
one of our employees has been placed under arrest," the
company said. "We are co-operating fully with the authorities
in their investigation."
Chief Fantino and lead investigators
in the case delivered the news to Holly's family immediately
after the arrest.
He said the 300-strong task
force investigating the case "worked tirelessly around the
clock, running down the more than 2,300 tips that poured in from
the public as well as investigative leads."
The day before the arrest,
Holly's elementary school dedicated a small garden to her memory
in an emotional ceremony.
Her father, George Stonehouse,
sat ashen-faced and her mother, Marie Jones, watched silently
as their daughter's friends cried and her brother and sisters
quietly wiped tears from their eyes.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
- Cecilia case sparks
privacy worries
DNA sampling called rights issue
Investigation third in a year to use it
MELISSA LEONG AND MICHELLE
SHEPHARD, STAFF REPORTERS, Toronto Star, Jan. 4, 2004. 08:25 AM
Collecting group DNA samples,
as Toronto homicide investigators have been doing in the Cecilia
Zhang abduction case, can be a valuable investigative tool. But
the practice also poses a danger to people's civil rights, civil
libertarians warn.
Tenants in the building where
the 9-year-old's family owned a private tutoring school have
been asked to voluntarily provide DNA samples - the third time
Toronto police have asked the public to submit to forensic testing
in the past year.
Lawyers and civil libertarians
say safeguards are needed to ensure that these samples are properly
used and later disposed of.
"DNA has a tremendous
capacity to invade people's privacy," Alan Borovoy, of the
Canadian Civil Liberties Association said in an interview yesterday.
He said there are no guidelines
or independent body to ensure that samples are not used for other
purposes and are disposed of once the person is cleared of a
specific crime through testing.
Police also took DNA samples
when looking for 10-year-old Holly Jones' killer last year, and
when probing the stabbing of real estate agent Lisa Posluns in
her Yorkville office building in November, 2002.
The difficulty with this investigative
tool is that it turns policing into a "loyalty test,"
said lawyer Clayton Ruby. "If you say no, it's because you
have something to hide."
It turns the right to silence
into a sign of guilt, he said.
"It's true that good citizens
co-operate with the police. But the fact that someone chooses
not to do so should not render them suspect," he said. "In
a free country, you don't do that. That's the sign of a police
state, not the sign of a democracy."
Michael Briere, the man charged
in Holly Jones' slaying, aroused suspicion when he refused to
provide a DNA sample.
Cecilia disappeared from her
North York home Oct. 20.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
