Missing hair sample key to murder conviction
Last Updated: Monday, May 3, 2004 | 3:45 PM ET
CBC News
Kyle Unger is hoping to have a 1990 conviction overturned in which he and another man were found guilty of beating, strangling and sexually mutilating 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier at an outdoor rock concert in Roseisle, southwest of Winnipeg.
The other man, Timothy Houlahan, committed suicide in 1994.
Hair comparison evidence was used against them and is now being reviewed as part of a province-wide investigation. Any murder trial that used hair-comparison and in which the accused protests innocence is now under review.
Kyle Unger (file photo)
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The hair-comparison review committee was set up after hair evidence in two cases was found to be wrong. Its members recommended the government submit hair from Kyle Unger's trial for DNA testing.
The strand of hair was the only piece of physical evidence linking Unger to Grenier's murder – but sources have told the CBC that the RCMP can't find the hair. No one from the police force, the province or the hair-review committee would comment, but University of Manitoba law professor David Deutscher said the missing hair presents a problem for Unger if he wants to request a new trial.
"It just makes their evidence weaker ... but they might be able to point to the fact that it's no fault of theirs that this evidence was lost," says Deutscher.
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