More Police Errors in the Ardeth Wood Case

A 76-year-old former RCMP Officer saw Ardeth Wood on the day that she disappeared. She was on the bike path and he had been cycling. He said to her that it seemed awfully hot out and she agreed. Then she continued on with her biking and the former officer, Al Dzikowski, noticed a younger man on a bike who followed Ardeth. He thought nothing of it at the time but after he read about Ardeth's disappearance, he called the police right away and left a message on their answering machine.

What did they do? They ignored him. This did not deter Dzikowski, who contacted the Wood family directly. In turn, they called the police but police still did not meet with the former RCMP man or request that he look at a lineup of suspects or mug shots.

In fact, it took the police more than two years to contact Dzikowski, who now believes that Chris Myers was the man on the trail. When the police finally did call Dzikowski in September of this year, they conscientiously took down his name, address and phone number. Only problem is that they took down the phone number incorrectly, so they never called him back! Sounds like a Monty Python skit except that it's not funny.

As if it wasn't bad enough to extradite Myers from Arnprior to North Bay without realizing that he bore a resemblance to the composite sketch, Ottawa Police have managed to compound their error by incompetently handling a tip from a man who actually spoke to Ardeth Wood on the NCC path!

What I have said previously about eyewitness testimony being unreliable notwithstanding, things are looking bad for Chris Myers. The original description of the suspect in the Wood case was a man in his mid to late twenties but Dzikowski always maintained that the person he saw looked much younger -- somewhere between 18 to 23. That would fit in with Myers' profile since Ardeth Wood was murdered in 2003 and Chris Myers is 25 right now.

Police Chief Bevan has a lot of explaining to do.

Sigrid Mac