Jury hears accused killer's police statement

Jurors hearing evidence in a 26-year-old murder case are getting a glimpse of Mark Edward Grant on the day of his arrest in May 2007.

The 12 men and women watcheda 3 -hour video statement Grant made after being arrestedand accused in the 1984 death of 13-year-old Candace Derksen.

Grant, now 47,is charged with leavingDerksen to freeze to death in a brickyard shedafter she disappeared on her way home from school at the end of November 1984.

Her body was found six weeks later. The shed was just 500 metres from her family's home.

It was a case that haunted the city for decades as it went unsolved. The break came after the Derksen file was assigned to investigators in the city's new cold case unit in 2006.

The jury has already heard that Grant was linked to Derksen through a degraded, partial DNA sample found on the rope binding her body and hair at the crime scene.

'If you guys have a case, then prove it to me because I don't believe you do.' Mark Edward Grant, in taped interview with police

But the defence has attacked that evidence as having not been handled properly in the years before it was tested.

The video statement is the final element of the Crown's case against Grant.

In it, Grant appears haggard and dressed in a black T-shirt. Heleans back in a chair, his heavily tattooed arms folded in front of his chest.

At other points he puts his head on the table andat times,seems to have fallen asleep.

Under questioning by a police detective, Grant says little.At one point in the interview, he asks for insulin, prompting police to warn they'll search his apartment when going to get it.

At another point, Grant challenged the police to prove his guilt. He told them he wanted a lawyer and he wanted proof.

"If you guys have a case, then prove it to me because I don't believe you do," he tells officers.

The officers who arrested him, Sgt. Allan Bradbury, the head of the cold-case unit for the Winnipeg Police Service in 2007, and his partner Sgt. Jon Lutz, take turns questioningGrant, whoinsists early on that he didn't know Derksen and doesn't know anything about the case.

Lutz tells Grant about the Derksen family and how her disappearance and death hurt her parents.

"I can't imagine what they would have gone through. Her brother and sister were affected ... They're still in a lot of pain," the officer says.

They are looking for answers, Lutz says, but Grant has none to offer.

Lutz promises they will tell Grant why he was arrested.

"I will tell you at the end of the day why you're our guy ... The truth is the truth. It doesn't change," he says as he tries again to get Grant to open up.

"I have no comment," was Grant's only response.