How Charlottetown Police Lost Evidence in a 1988 Cold Case - and Why All Charges Were Dropped

All charges against Todd Joseph Irving, 59, were dropped Tuesday after Charlottetown Police Services confirmed it had lost the physical evidence needed to prosecute him for the 1988 murder of P.E.I. teacher Byron Carr. The collapse of the case has left Carr's family without answers and raised serious questions about how a piece of evidence that critical could go missing for decades without the Crown ever being told.

What happened to Byron Carr

Carr was found strangled and stabbed in his home in 1988. The case went cold for years before police reopened it in 2007. Irving was not arrested and charged with first-degree murder and interfering with human remains until early 2024 - a breakthrough made possible, police said at the time, by advances in investigative genetic genealogy that linked Irving's DNA to samples recovered at the crime scene.

At a pre-trial hearing, prosecutors outlined DNA evidence connecting Irving to Carr's body, a pair of underwear found at the scene, and a cigarette butt placed in Carr's navel. A trial was scheduled to begin in November 2026.

When did police know the evidence was gone?

According to Charlottetown's interim police chief, Darren MacDougall, the department knew as far back as 2007 - when the cold case was reopened - that the knife left at the scene and the towel used to strangle Carr were missing. Rather than disclose this, investigators decided to build their case around the DNA evidence instead.

"This was 1988. It was a different time in policing, the standards were far different than they are today," MacDougall told CBC News on Tuesday.

The P.E.I. Crown Attorney's Office, however, says it only found out about the missing evidence in July 2026 - years after Irving's arrest and just months before the trial. Crown attorney Christopher White said he was disappointed the case would not proceed.

"This was a matter of personal and public significance," White said. "I think that everyone involved viewed that it was important that it be adjudicated."

Former Charlottetown police chief Brad MacConnell, who led the investigation for years and now serves as the city's chief administrative officer, acknowledged the evidence gap had become insurmountable. "It became apparent over the last several months as we worked through this that the challenges were too much to overcome," he said.

Why losing physical evidence can sink a case

In Canadian criminal proceedings, the Crown bears the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Physical evidence - particularly items like a murder weapon or ligature - is often central to that case, especially in a decades-old homicide where witnesses may be unreliable or unavailable.

DNA evidence can be powerful, but its weight depends heavily on context. Irving's DNA was not found on the towel used to strangle Carr, nor on a sock police believe was used as a makeshift glove. Without the physical items to anchor the forensic findings, prosecutors faced a case built almost entirely on biological samples with no corroborating objects to tie them to the crime.

The fact that the Crown was not informed of the missing evidence until July - long after charges were laid and a trial date set - points to a significant failure in disclosure. In Canada, the Crown has a constitutional obligation under the R. v. Stinchcombe framework to disclose all relevant evidence to the defence. When police hold back information about what they don't have, it can compromise that process entirely.

Where the case stands now

With all charges withdrawn, Irving is free. The case against him is effectively over. Whether the Charlottetown Police Services faces any formal review or accountability for how the evidence was handled - and why the Crown was kept in the dark for years - remains to be seen.

For Carr's family, the outcome means a murder from nearly four decades ago may never be fully resolved in court.