Truck odometer, CCTV, cell tower data track suspect's alleged route on night of Calgary park homicide

CTV News

a day ago

A crime analyst testified at the first-degree murder trial for a man accused of killing a Calgary woman in a city park.
**GRAPHIC WARNING: Some of the details of this story may be disturbing to some readers**
A crime analyst with the Calgary Police Service testified on day five of the first-degree murder trial for a man accused of killing a Calgary woman in a city park—nearly 14 years after he was convicted in the death of another woman in the same park.
Fifty-year-old Christopher Ward Dunlop is accused of stabbing Judy Maerz, 58, more than seventy times before setting her body ablaze in Deerfoot Athletic Park.
The woman was found badly burned with her throat slit by someone walking their dogs in the early morning of Feb. 16, 2023.
Dunlop has pleaded not guilty to both first-degree murder and causing indignity to a body.
Mark Ruggieri's testimony appeared to reinforce part of the Crown's theory of events, which alleges Maerz travelled by bus to an area in Forest Lawn known at the time to be popular for picking up sex workers, where she was picked up by Dunlop.
As part of the investigation, Ruggieri examined dozens of surveillance videos captured the night of Feb. 15, including Maerz leaving her apartment on 23rd Avenue S.W. and travelling on several bus routes to Forest Lawn.
Surveillance footage also presented in court shows a person drive a truck into a parking lot at the Peter Lougheed Centre and leave in an orange SUV before returning to the parking lot and leaving in the truck later that night.
According to the agreed statement of facts of the trial, Dunlop was the primary driver of the truck, while his wife, who worked at the Peter Lougheed Centre, was the primary driver of a Rav4.
Ruggieri also presented theoretical travel patterns based on the truck's odometer readings and cell tower data.
Fifty-year-old Christopher Ward Dunlop is accused of stabbing Judy Maerz, 58, more than seventy times before setting her body ablaze in Deerfoot Athletic Park.
Fifty-year-old Christopher Ward Dunlop is accused of stabbing Judy Maerz, 58, more than seventy times before setting her body ablaze in Deerfoot Athletic Park.
Dunlop was charged in Maerz's death roughly three years after he was released from prison for manslaughter in the death of another woman.
Dunlop admitted to strangling Laura Furlan after having sex with her in Deerfoot Athletic Park on Sept. 7, 2009, and then dumping her body in Fish Creek Provincial Park.
He was given a 13-year sentence with six-and-a-half years credit for time he'd already served in remand.
Both women worked in the sex trade, and Crown prosecutors argue Dunlop 'had an animus toward street sex workers and set out that fateful night to find a street sex worker to kill.'
The accused put on glasses to watch the videos presented in court from the prisoner's box.
The defence has yet to present its case in the judge-only trial, which is scheduled to run until June 27.