The husband of a Quebec woman who disappeared almost four years ago and whose remains were finally found in November has been arrested.
CTV Montreal's Stephane Giroux reports that Paul Laplante has been arrested in connection to the death of his wife, Diane Gregoire.
The Surete du Quebec will release more details Tuesday afternoon, but Giroux has learned that Laplante will be arraigned in a Valleyfield, Que. courtroom on Wednesday on murder charges.
Police would only confirm that they had arrested someone in the case and that he would face charges Wednesday.
"He knew the victim," was all provincial police Lt. Guy Lapointe would tell reporters. "(He's) 54 years old."
Gregoire's skeletal remains were found in late November in a densely wooded area in Quebec. The 51-year-old bank worker had disappeared on Jan. 31, 2008.
Police said at the time that Laplante was the last person to see her before she disappeared. Laplante, a former mayor in the couple's hometown of St-Liboire, told police he left Gregoire in the car of a shopping mall parking lot in St-Bruno and went inside to have breakfast. He said she never joined him, as agreed.
Police were never able to determine that Gregoire had ever been at the mall that day.
In the months that followed, volunteers searched a number of areas for signs of the missing woman. In September 2011, police confirmed they considered the disappearance a homicide.
They also announced they were searching a pig farm near Granby in the Eastern Townships, saying they were working on a tip from a witness.
At that time, Gregoire's daughter, Elizabeth Laplante, spoke publicly to say she and her brother Francis accepted the police's conclusion that their mother was dead. She did not mention her father at that news conference.
Gregoire's remains were finally found on Nov. 21, by a hiker almost 80 kilometres away from where she reportedly disappeared, in a heavily forested area in Coteau-du-Lac, not far from the Ontario border.
