49-year-old Quebec man arrested in 2002 death of young Alberta woman

A 49-year-old Quebec man was arrested sixteen years to the day a 21-year-old woman was found dead in a farmer’s field south of Calgary.

This past weekend, Stephane Joseph Raymond Parent was arrested and charged with the second-degree murder of Adrienne McColl.

READ MORE: New technology helping with 16-year-old cold case in southern Alberta

McColl’s body was found in February 2002 by a rancher tending his cattle in a field, about 85 kilometres south of Calgary. She’d gone missing around Valentine’s Day and was found on Feb. 17 just outside Nanton, Alta.

WATCH FROM 2003: Francis Silvaggio sits down with family and friends of Adrienne McColl on the one-year anniversary of her disappearance.

2:45 From the archives: Police continue investigating death of Adrienne McColl 1 year after disappearance

Police said both McColl and Parent lived in Calgary in 2002 and worked together at a bar. They were in a relationship: Parent was McColl’s boyfriend.

In an update Monday, RCMP said Parent bought a one-way ticket from Calgary to Ottawa in the days after McColl was found dead, and he has lived in Ontario and Quebec ever since.

Police said Parent was initially a person of interest in the early days of the investigation, and was considered a missing person until he was located out east.

On Saturday, Feb. 17, he was arrested outside his home in Gatineau, Quebec. He was being brought back to Alberta on Monday to have his first court appearance in Calgary.

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About one week ago, the RCMP announced that advances in forensic technologies had permitted them to discover new evidence in the cold case.

READ MORE: Cold Case: A look inside the Alberta RCMP’s Historical Homicide Unit

The force’s major crimes unit said in the earlier statement they were convinced they would make an arrest and that the investigation had been ongoing since the discovery of McColl’s body.

— With files from The Canadian Press