On the evening of Feb. 21, 2011, a motorist travelling through a small town north of Trois-Rivières called 911 to report a fire in a wooded area along Highway 155.
When firefighters arrived on the scene, they made a gruesome discovery. Among the debris was the badly burned body of a man abandoned at the side of the road. When the Sûreté du Québec began investigating, they asked the public for help in solving the mystery.
The body was taken to the provincial crime lab in Montreal for an autopsy, but a coroner was unable to identify the man.
One day earlier, on Feb. 20, 2011, the worried family of Collin Anthony Williams, of Châteauguay, called Montreal police to report that he gone missing. Williams, 38, visited his mother in LaSalle that day and was on his way to a bar in the neighbourhood when he vanished.
About 10 days later, Montreal police notified the media about Williams’s disappearance. “He is not in the habit of leaving people close to him without news,” the police report said. Anyone with information was asked to call police investigators.
After Williams vanished, his name was added to a database of missing persons that police forces across Canada can access. Police also have access to a list of all unidentified bodies in Quebec.
Despite the existence of both databases, it took police almost two years to identify Williams as the man whose badly burned body was found on the side of the highway near Trois-Rivières.
While family and friends have spent almost two years wondering what had become of Williams, his body was lying in the Montreal morgue on Parthenais St.
The SQ said on Wednesday that they were able to identify Williams after a sample of his DNA was entered into a DNA database.
The SQ and the Montreal police could not say why it took two years for them to figure out that the man who was reported missing on Feb. 20, 2011, was the same person who was found near Trois-Rivières the next day.
SQ Sgt. Eloise Cossette said the match was made after Montreal police put a sample of Williams’s DNA in a police database, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t say when that was done.
“You have to ask the Montreal police,” she said.
Cossette defended the provincial police’s handling of the case, saying all the SQ had to go on “was a badly burned body.”
“When people disappear, it is not systematic that we (police) get a DNA sample,” Cossette said. “It is after time, when the person doesn’t come back and we are out of options, (that it’s done).”
Montreal police spokesperson Yannick Ouimet said he couldn’t provide any details of why it took police two years to identify Williams. He said he didn’t know when, and wouldn’t find out when, the DNA sample had been entered into the database by Montreal police.
“DNA can take 12 to 18 months unless it is an emergency,” Ouimet said. “This is not CSI Miami, where everything takes place within 24 hours.”
Cossette said she couldn’t release any more details about the case because the SQ is conducting a homicide investigation.
Williams had three children and worked at the Jewish General Hospital at the time he disappeared. Police have no motive for his killing.
His family could not be reached for comment.
Thursday 7 February 2013
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/body+unidentified+years+family+hoped+return/7928415/story.html#ixzz2KEpc5lLe
0 comments:
Post a Comment