Police arrest convicted murderer in separate cold case

File photo of convicted murderer Ernest Westergard. HANDOUT

Toronto police have arrested a convicted murderer in an unrelated 30-year-old cold case.

At a news conference Friday afternoon, Det.-Sgt. Steve Ryan said police had charged Ernest Westergard, already in jail, in the strangling death of Donna Proian.

Proian's husband found her body in their St. Patrick Street apartment on June 23, 1981.

“I hope that this announcement today gives comfort to all those families who have lost loved ones to homicide and whose killers have not yet been identified,” Ryan said.

“I say to them that we as investigators never give up. We never forget your loved ones.”

Westergard, who is serving time for a 1994 murder in Peel Region, appeared in an Old City hall court Friday morning.