By Kenneth Jackson
APTN National News
In December, Gatineau police said they were “very anxious” for DNA test results of an Ottawa man they believed could have killed Kelly Morrisseau, an Indigenous pregnant woman and mother of three.
That was Dec. 10 – the anniversary of Morrisseau’s unsolved murder in 2006 and the DNA samples had been with a Montreal crime lab for several months by then.
The person of interest – Marc Leduc – was already locked up in an Ottawa jail.
He was accused in the first-degree murder of two Ottawa women, and the attempted murder of another. If his DNA was to be linked evidence left behind on Morrisseau, 27, it would make Leduc an accused serial killer – all the victims women struggling day after day.
Police said they expected results back in a couple weeks.
So just before Christmas APTN National News called police back to see if Morrisseau’s family would have some good news.
They had no results.
A month later the same thing.
Then again a month after that.
Each time police said they had no news.
Then about a week ago a Gatineau police spokesman called to say the investigation was on-going and they were still working with Ottawa police.
But what about the DNA results?
He replied “partial” lab results of some sort were back, or at least now being made public to the media.
“Some of the results are helpful going on the investigation. There’s a lot to do in the investigation,” said Gatineau police spokesman Pierre Lanthier. “ We’re not even close to an arrest in the case. There’s a lot of things to be done. We’re still working with the collaboration of Ottawa police. We’re looking at that man (Leduc) for sure.”
Lantheir wouldn’t say if the partial lab results were DNA.
But he did say if they had something concrete police would have told the media by now.
“Sometimes it’s complicated,” said Lanthier of the lab results. “It’s too early. We have to do some verification with the crime lab in Montreal. We have, I won’t say a full time investigator on the case, but we have someone who is looking at all the information and some of the results we already received from the crime lab.”
Lanthier wasn’t sure if police had gone to speak to Leduc who is detained in the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre, a provincial jail in the city’s east end.
APTN called his lawyer Ian Carter who said he didn’t believe police had.
Carter knew police were testing DNA but hadn’t heard anything more.
Leduc was arrested February 2013 in the deaths of Pam Kosmack, 39, and Leanne Lawson, 23 as first reported by APTN. He was already in jail awaiting charges of attempted murder of another woman in November 2012.
DNA test results allegedly tied him to the murders of Kosmack and Lawson.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for September. He has claimed to be First Nation.
Once the news broke, Gatineau police immediately wanted his DNA to test against Morrisseau but it took months before they could get a sample to examine.
In the mean time, there’s Morrsseau’s family.
Some living in Ottawa, some in Manitoba.
All the while wanting closure in the young woman’s death.
“We all wait for the day that her murder will be solved and her killer brought to justice,” said her uncle Warren Morrisseau from Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba where she is buried next to her adoptive father Faron Cook. “She is truly missed by all of us.”
Cook died last year never knowing who killed her.
The police working theory is Kelly Morriseau was picked up by someone and taken over to Gatineau to have sex. Police have said she was in the sex trade but her family denies she was a prostitute.
The facts are this: She was a mother, she was pregnant and someone stabbed her over 20 times dumping her nearly naked on the pavement of a parking lot in Gatineau park.
She was found by a passerby at about 5 a.m. still alive.
A paramedic said at the time she was alive because it was so cold out that it basically put her “on ice.” She died about an hour later at the Hull hospital just around the corner.
Her baby died too.
It was a gruesome end – for both.
The only thing the family can do, as they wait for justice, is keep remembering.
“Her smile,” said Warren Morrisseau. “And her laughter were most memorable. I can hear her laughter still today.”
