The arrest of the man accused in the 1984 death of teenager Candace Derksen could have been made more than five years ago, if the national RCMP lab had had the right technology, say Winnipeg police.

Candace Derksen, shown in this undated file photo, was found dead in a shed on a construction site in January 1985, almost seven weeks after she disappeared. (Family photo/CBC)

Some of the forensic evidence in the case had been previously sent for analysis at the national RCMP lab in 2001, but that laboratory wasn't able to process it, Insp. Tom Legg said Thursday.

Legge spoke a day after convicted sex offender Mark Edward Grant, 43, was charged with first-degree murder. Police have said the results of forensic testing led investigators to Grant. 

"It took us this long because in the last few recent years …some of our expert officers have done a lot of research and found out that [private] labs can, in fact, do more than our national labs can," Legge said.

"For these good folks who work in Ottawa, I hope at the end of the day they get the tools or the funding they need. Hopefully that happens, because this is the result."

Investigators in Winnipeg sent samples to a private lab in Thunder Bay, Ont., last fall.

Although police declined to provide details of what the evidence was, Legge confirmed those tests helped in Grant's arrest.

Derksen disappeared on the way home from school on a Friday at the end of November 1984.

Her bound and frozen body was found 48 days later in an abandoned industrial shed less than 500 metres from her family's home in Winnipeg's East Kildonan neighbourhood.

With files from the Canadian Press