A poster of Garry Handlen was handed out as police gathered evidence.
Image Credit: RCMP HANDOUT
March 19, 2015 - 1:00 PM
VICTORIA - The case of an Ontario man charged with first-degree murder in the historic deaths of two young girls in B.C. will go directly to trial.
Proceedings for 67-year-old Garry Handlen will be moved to B.C. Supreme Court from provincial court, meaning his case will move forward without a preliminary inquiry.
Handlen is scheduled to make a brief court appearance in a Vancouver courtroom on Friday.
He was arrested in Surrey, B.C., late last year and is accused of killing 11-year-old Kathryn-Mary Herbert in 1975, and 12-year-old Monica Jack in 1978.
Herbert disappeared in Abbotsford, and Jack was last seen in Merritt.
Handlen appeared in provincial court by video link earlier this month, when the mothers of the two children wiped away tears as they left the courtroom.
LINK: Ontario man arrested in 1970s murders of two B.C. girls including one from Merritt
Madeline Lanaro, whose daughter Monica Jack was 12-years-old when she was murdered in 1978 near Merritt, B.C., wipes away tears after the RCMP announced an arrest in connection to her murder and that of Kathryn-Mary Herbert, during a news conference in Surrey, B.C., on Monday December 1, 2014.
Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
News from © The Canadian Press, 2015