RCMP have charged a B.C. man with the murder of a Saskatchewan mother 30 years ago.
Police say two masked men broke into the home of Frances Wendland in Rosthern, Sask. on Dec. 14, 1985. They locked her two daughters, aged seven and eight, along with a 10-year-old friend who had been sleeping over, in a basement bathroom.
Court records show Wendland was then tied up with packing tape -- her neck, chin and mouth tightly bound.
When the girls got out of the bathroom, they found the woman dead in a bedroom.
Pathologists who testified at a previous trial in the case determined Wendland died from neck compression.
In 1990, police arrested Donald Marlow and a jury convicted him of first-degree murder for being an accessory to the killing.
Court heard Wendland's estranged husband, Larry, used Marlow to hire two men to kill her.
Larry Wendland, who married the couple's babysitter a year after the killing, committed suicide in 1989.
Court heard at Marlow's trial that the Wendlands were swingers and that Larry was worried Frances would used videotapes of their sex life in divorce and custody proceedings.
RCMP arrested Dennis Henry Hahn, 65, of Surrey, B.C., last week. He appeared in Saskatoon court Monday to face charges of first-degree murder and unlawful confinement.
He is to appear in court again July 27.
Mounties wouldn't reveal what led them to arrest Hahn after so much time has passed.
An RCMP news release says investigators from across Western Canada worked on the case and, "despite time and other challenges," never gave up.