It was a day Pierre Campeau never thought he’d see: a suspect arrested for the kidnap, rape and murder of his nine-year-old daughter.
"I had lost hope,” the father said.
Pierre’s little girl, Joleil Campeau, went missing on June 12, 1995.
Her body was found four days later in a swamp, just steps from her home on Debussy Street in the Auteuil district of Laval.
Police questioned a suspect at the time, but were forced to let him go due to lack of evidence.
With time, new technology, and determined detectives, police were finally able to link DNA evidence to 37-year-old Eric Daudelin.
He was arrested at Trudeau airport on Wednesday night, as he returned to Montreal from a trip.
“The evidence is very solid,” said crown prosecutor Pierre-Luc Rolland.
On Thursday at the Laval courthouse, Daudelin’s appeared only briefly.
He never glanced at the nearly two dozen members of Joleil’s family gathered in the courtroom.
He showed no reaction when the young girl’s stepfather yelled out that he was disgusting, nor when another family member called him names.
For Joleil’s family, Daudelin’s arrest comes as a relief.
Joleil’s family says now they’ll be able to turn the page and begin to move on.
Despite their misfortune, Joleil’s father considers himself lucky.
"At least we had her body… Not like Jolene Riendeau’s family who had nothing for 12 years,” he said, referring to another Montreal family whose loved one also disappeared.
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