Police return to Shad Bay to search for clues in cold case

CTV Atlantic: Police return to Shad Bay property Investigators say information led them back to Shad Bay, N.S. near a property thought to be connected to a 20-year-old cold case.

Investigators say information led them back to Shad Bay, N.S. near a property thought to be connected to a 20-year-old cold case.

Forensic identification officers used shovels, saws and rakes to comb through the woods on a neighbouring property Thursday afternoon.

“Last March we found out police were searching the property for bodies or something like that,” neighbour Matthew Allain told CTV News.

“But I don’t know a whole lot about what is happening now, if they are back searching the property, searching for something else, I am not really sure.”

Police first combed the woods and searched a home and shed in the area for four days in March.

At the time, police said they were looking for remains in the hopes of solving a decades-old missing persons case but no bones were found.

Today, items were seized on a nearby property, but police aren’t saying what was taken.

“Well, anytime you do a search, the workers are going to take stuff,” says Halifax RCMP Cpl. Scott MacRae. “There’s potential to have items seized. It could just be dirt, earth.”

Police arrived at the scene Thursday morning and searched areas toward the back of the property, which are densely wooded and overgrown.

The property searched in March belongs to the brother of Andrew Paul Johnson, who has long been considered a suspect in the disappearance of Kimberly McAndrew.

The 19-year-old disappeared in the summer of 1989 after clocking out of work at a Canadian Tire store in Halifax.

Johnson, 54, is in prison in British Columbia for kidnapping and unlawful confinement in a separate case.

He was denied parole last week and sited as a possible suspect in several cases in Eastern Canada, including the death of 18-year-old Andrea King, who was reported missing in Halifax on Jan. 4, 1992.

Her remains were eventually discovered in a wooded area in Lower Sackville, near the Sackville Industrial Park, on Dec. 22, 1992, but no charges were ever laid.

Police suspended their search of the property in Shad Bay Thursday afternoon. MacRae says investigators likely won’t be back on Friday.

The items collected today will be turned over to the forensic lab.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Kelland Sundahl