Wilma Derksen said her family was “shocked” after Mark Edward Grant — the man acquitted in 2017 of murdering her 13-year-old daughter Candace in Winnipeg in 1984 — was arrested in Vancouver in January 2026 and charged with sexual assault, unlawful confinement, assault with a weapon and uttering threats over an alleged Jan. 8 incident.
‘Grief, horror and more grief’
Derksen, whose daughter was killed more than four decades ago, said in an email that her family was “shocked” to hear of Grant’s arrest, and that the news reopened questions the family still carries about Candace’s death.
“Our reactions were mixed — horrified at the act of assault that sounded so similar to Candace’s assault that led to her death. Curious if this incident would bring more answers — we still have questions — and ache for the victim and her family,” Derksen wrote.
She described the family’s experience as “grief, horror and more grief and then more horror.” Derksen also said she felt “huge pain” when she heard about the new charges, coming just days after the family marked the 41st anniversary of Candace’s death.
The Derksens became nationally known for choosing forgiveness in the years after their daughter’s murder, and later helped found Candace House, a Winnipeg refuge for families navigating the court system after losing a loved one to violence.
The Vancouver charges
Vancouver police said in a statement on Jan. 21 that the charges against Grant are connected with an alleged incident in the city’s Downtown Eastside on Jan. 8. Officers said they responded to an early-morning call reporting that a woman in her sixties had been sexually assaulted by a man inside a residential building near East Hastings Street and Columbia Street.
The B.C. Prosecution Service confirmed Grant faces charges of sexual assault with a weapon, unlawful confinement, assault with a weapon and uttering threats. Grant, 62, was in custody awaiting a bail hearing, and the prosecution service said he had a court appearance set for Jan. 28. The charges have not been tested in court, and Grant is presumed innocent of them.
This story does not name or describe the complainant in the Vancouver case beyond the general description police released.
A conviction that did not stand
Candace Derksen was last seen walking home from school in November 1984. Her body was found on Jan. 17, 1985, bound with twine in an industrial storage shed near her family’s Winnipeg home. She had died of exposure.
Grant was charged with murder in 2007 after his DNA was matched to DNA found on the twine used to bind the girl. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder in 2011, and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The Manitoba Court of Appeal overturned the conviction in 2013, finding the trial judge had erred in not allowing the defence to present evidence pointing to another possible perpetrator; the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the order for a new trial in 2015. At a judge-alone retrial in 2017, the DNA evidence was found to be unreliable, and Grant was acquitted. He had spent roughly a decade behind bars.
Grant was a stranger to the Derksen family at the time of Candace’s death. His Winnipeg defence lawyer in the murder case did not respond to a request for comment this week, nor did the lawyers representing him in his civil lawsuit.
The civil case, and what happened next
In 2019, Grant sued the Manitoba government and others over his prosecution, arguing he had been wrongfully convicted. A judge reserved a decision in that case in November 2025.
That judgment arrived in May 2026, when the Manitoba Court of Appeal dismissed the lawsuit, concluding prosecutors “cannot be faulted for not having a crystal ball” about how the law might change and finding no material facts to support the allegation of malice. Grant’s lawyer called the closed case “a wrongful conviction based on junk science.”
For Wilma Derksen, the Vancouver arrest landed on a family that had long since chosen a different path. “We had chosen the word ‘forgiveness’ from the beginning and have been determined that the trauma of murder would not rob us of our lives,” she said. “We have carried on.”
