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Investigators said the man handed the poster to a female clerk
at the information desk.
OPP
investigators took the unusual step of issuing a clear photo
of the man, snapped by the store’s surveillance camera, in
hopes that he would come forward.
Ecclestone
said the man was surprised when his picture was splashed
across the front pages of newspapers in Ontario, including The
Whig-Standard yesterday.
“He had no
idea until the story was published with his picture that
anybody was looking for him for any reason,” the lawyer said.
Ecclestone said the man immediately contacted police, who
interviewed him for about 15 minutes yesterday afternoon
inEcclestone’s office.
The man
co-operated fully with police, who took a videotaped
statement, Ecclestone said.
“He’s
definitely in no way a suspect,” Ecclestone said. “The police
are not interested in talking to him any further.”
The man
spoke with The Whig-Standard yesterday from his lawyer’s
office, but declined to give his name.
“He
doesn’t want his name published, he has already had lots of
calls and privacy issues as a result of the picture being
released,” Ecclestone said.
“He wanted
to make sure there was a story of equal prominence indicating
he came forward right away and co- operated fully with police
and is not being sought for any reason.”
In an
interview with The Whig, the man said on Oct. 29, 2003, he was
headed to Canadian Tire, where he’s a regular customer, when a
friend phoned him and mentioned that he had heard on the radio
that investigators had called off the search for Grozelle.
The man
said he spotted a missing poster depicting Grozelle that was
prominently displayed in the store.
Believing
the search had been called off and that investigators had
possibly found Grozelle, he said he felt the family shouldn’t
be faced with photos of their son plastered all over the city.
He said he
took the poster down and handed it to a clerk and told her
that perhaps the store should check whether the poster still
needed to be up.
“All he
said was that the search had been called off and the poster
may no longer be necessary,” Ecclestone said.
“He was
just relaying information that was publicly available.”
Investigators from the Canadian Forces National Investigation
Service didn’t call off the search for |
Grozelle
until Oct. 31, 2003. Police divers returned to the search the
water on Nov. 4.
The body
of the 21-year-old cadet washed up in the Inner Harbour on
Nov. 13, 2003.
The lead
OPP investigator, Det.-Insp. Ian Grant, confirmed that police
had interviewed a man they believed to be the person from the
photograph and that they interviewed him at his lawyer’s
office.
“We spoke
to the unidentified man and we believe he is the right
person,” Grant said. “The person is still just a witness,
nothing has changed.”
He said
the information the man provided didn’t raise any red flags
for investigators and he didn’t expect that police would
interview the man again.
“There’s
nothing untoward about the information,” Grant said. “He did
provide a logical explanation from our point of view.”
The man
told The Whig that he put his innocuous comment to the store
clerk out of his mind until yesterday, when he was inundated
with calls from as far away as Ottawa and Toronto after his
photo appeared in the paper.
The
callers included one person who threatened to to turn him in
to police, despite the fact investigators said he wasn’t a
suspect.
When he
realized he was the man police were looking for, the man said
he immediately called the Frontenac OPP and then called
Ecclestone to set up the interview with police.
He said he
called police so that the Grozelle family would have some
peace of mind knowing that there wasn’t someone out there
withholding important information about their son.
The man
said he was upset that police went to the lengths they did to
find him. Although investigators stressed that he wasn’t a
suspect, he said people viewed him with suspicion after his
photo was published.
“A lot of
people don’t read further than the headline, especially a big
headline and a big picture,” his lawyer said.
Grant said
he still believes police did the right thing by releasing the
photo.
“You
couldn’t have an action of somebody coming in two weeks before
Joe Grozelle’s body was located and do something of that
nature – taking down the poster – and not say [to yourself],
‘Why would that person be doing that when [the search] is
still going on?’ ” Grant said.
“But by
the other side of the coin, I don’t know everything that was
done or the press that was out at that time.” |
