The man known as the “Mill Woods rapist” made a brief court appearance Thursday morning regarding a second-degree murder charge he’s facing in the death of Jeanette Marie Cardinal.
Dana Fash, 38, appeared via video link in court, where the matter was put over to Jan. 26.
Cardinal’s body was found in an apartment suite on 119 Avenue and 81 Street in February 2011. Her death was determined to be a homicide.
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READ MORE: ‘Mill Woods rapist’ charged for 2011 homicide of Jeanette Marie Cardinal after new testing
Edmonton police said Fash was a person of interest in the first few days following Cardinal’s death, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him. Additional testing gave officers what they needed to move forward with the second-degree murder charge, police said.
Edmonton police issued a warning to Edmontonians in December after Fash was released from prison because they considered him to be “violent and sexually violent” and considered the 38-year-old “to pose a risk of significant harm to the community.”
READ MORE: Release of ‘Mill Woods rapist’ spurs warning from Edmonton police
Fash, who became known across Edmonton as the “Mill Woods rapist,” was handed a 12-year sentence in 1997 for sexually assaulting two women. One was a 44-year-old janitor he attacked with scissors in a staff washroom at Malcolm Tweddle Elementary School in Mill Woods. Another was a grandmother he attacked at knifepoint.
Both attacks took place in 1994 when he was just 16 years old.
In 2009, he was put behind bars again for breaching conditions of his conditional release that required him to abstain from drugs and alcohol.
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