A 43-year-old man has been arrested and charged in connection with the 1984 death of Winnipeg teenager Candace Derksen, police say.

Candace Derksen, seen in an undated file photo, was found slain in a shed in Winnipeg.
(Family photo/CBC)

Mark Edward Grant was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with first-degree murder.

Grant, classified as a dangerous offender by justice officials, has a lengthy criminal record with several convictions for assault and sexual assault, court documents indicate. 

Derksen, 13, was last seen walking home from the Mennonite Brethren Collegiate in the East Kildonan area of Winnipeg in November 1984. Her frozen body was found seven weeks later in a shed in the same neighbourhood. Bound at the wrists and ankles, she died of exposure.

Police said they believed she had been in the the little-used machine shed owned by a manufacturing company since the day she disappeared.

The suspect was 21 at the time of Derksen's death and lived in the area. 

Investigators said he was "known to police" and had been among the hundreds interviewed after Derksen's disappearance, but was not considered a suspect at the time.

Winnipeg police said Wednesday the break in the case came after the Derksen file was handed to investigators in the city's new cold case unit in 2006.

Mark Edward Grant, 43, has been classified a dangerous offender. He's charged with murder, some 23 years after the death of schoolgirl Candace Derksen.
(CBC)

Investigators declined to reveal details of the break, but said cold case detectives had noticed connections in notes in the case files that led them to identify suspects and submit forensic evidence to a private laboratory in Ontario.

The laboratory results led them to Grant, officers said.

Candace's parents, Wilma and Cliff Derksen, attended the police news conference where the suspect was identified.

"We are stunned at a few things: that the case has come to this point, and also that there is such huge interest in it," Cliff Derksen said.

"We had actually given up hope. We were already prepared to live with this mystery that has shadowed our family for so many years."

Both Derksens said they did not know Grant.

The Derksens said they felt both "anticipation and trepidation" about the progress in the case, as well as a renewed sense of sadness and loss over their daughter's death.