Montreal police to provide 'major' new development in woman's 1996 disappearance

Montreal police say they have made a "major development" in the case of a missing woman from the late 1990s.

After reopening the cold case late last year, police said they will be providing an update to the media Friday morning at 10:30 into the disappearance of Patricia Ferguson.

Ferguson was last seen near the corner of Notre-Dame Street and 56th Avenue in Pointe-aux-Trembles on June 6, 1996. She was 23. 

Police set up a command post at that location last December in the hopes of gathering more information into her disappearance.

At the time, investigators said they had new leads thanks to a true-crime documentary that was done through a partnership with Unsolved Murders and Missing Cases of Quebec, a group that supports families of missing people, and Noovo Info journalist Marie-Christine Bergeron.

After the series began airing in December, police sent the team back to Pointe-aux-Trembles to reopen the case.

"They gave new facts that we didn't have in 1996," said Lt.-Det Sebastien Levesque at the time. "New, important facts."

Police learned, for example, in which apartment Ferguson spent the night before she went missing.

The development comes after a recent breakthrough in another Montreal cold case. Last month, police in Longueuil, on Montreal's South Shore, solved a 1975 murder after new techniques in DNA evidence identified the killer of Sharron Prior.