Police arrest suspect 10 years after Jenique Dalcourt killed in Longueuil, Que.
Longueuil police have arrested a suspect in connection with the nearly 10-year-old homicide of Jenique Dalcourt.
Police arrested Michael Mcduff-Jalbert, 35, on Tuesday, Pierre Duquette, the chief Inspector of the Major Crimes Division at the Service de police de l'agglomération de Longueuil (SPAL) said at a news conference Wednesday.
He will appear at the Longueuil, Que., courthouse this afternoon where he will face a first first degree murder charge.
The 23-year-old woman was found beaten to death on a bike path in Longeuil, Que., just south of Montreal, in October 2014. At the time police arrested a suspect, a 26-year-old man, but did not have enough evidence to lay charges.
A year later, police presented a new dossier to the office of Quebec's director of penal and criminal prosecutions (DPCP), which once again said it didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest.
"I'd like to sincerely thank [her family] for trusting us throughout this investigation," Duquette said.
Duquette said police cannot disclose how they gathered evidence in this case, so as to not interfere with the judicial process, though he said it involved recent technology. He said the investigation team on the case was the same that solved Sharron Prior's murder last year.
Dalcourt was a kind, happy young woman who exuded positivity, her brother Nick Gandolfo said at the time of her death.
"It was just something that radiated off of her," he told CBC News.
"I knew that if I was having a bad day, I could reach out to my younger sister and she would put a smile on my face. Just thinking about it now puts a smile on my face."
Other cold-cases solved
Though police did not confirm what technology was used in Dalcourt's case, a number of cold cases have recently been solved thanks to advances in DNA testing.
Last year, Longueuil police solved the 50-year-old murder of Montreal teen Sharron Prior.
She disappeared in 1975 after setting out to meet friends at a pizza parlour near her home in Montreal's Pointe-St-Charles neighbourhood. Her body was found three days later in a wooded area in Longueuil.
At the time, the amount of DNA gathered at the scene was insufficient to be tested or used in court. In 2019, genealogical DNA testing led police to Franklin Romine, an American from West Virginia, who died in 1982. His body was exhumed and police confirmed the DNA match.
In February, Marc-André Grenon was found guilty by a jury of killing Guylaine Potvin in 2000.
Grenon was arrested in October 2022 after DNA on two discarded drinking straws matched DNA evidence from the crime scene. This match was confirmed through a second DNA test after Grenon's arrest.
