WINNIPEG — The case of a man accused of killing 15-year-old Manitoba girl Tina Fontaine will not be back in court until after the holidays.
Raymond Cormier, 53, waived an appearance in a Winnipeg courtroom on Tuesday and his case was put over until Jan. 8.
Cormier is charged with second-degree murder in the death of the teen, whose body was found wrapped in a bag in the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014.
His lawyer, Pam Smith, said her client will be fighting the charges.
"He will be contesting the charge," she wrote in an email. "He will not appear until he makes a bail application, if he does."
Cormier has spent almost half his life behind bars.
Parole board documents indicate he has a long history of violent crime fuelled by drug addiction. The parole board, noting he was a high risk to reoffend, revoked Cormier's statutory release in 2012 after he had served time for robbery.
The 2012 report says Cormier had at that time racked up over 80 convictions — 17 of which were offences involving violence. Previous court documents show that since 1978, Cormier has spent more than 23 years in prison for various offences that include assault and theft.
"File information indicates that you were under the influence of illegal substances for most of your past offences and the assaults were most often during your attempt to steal money from your victims for drugs," said the parole board report.
Although many were calling for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, Tina's death in 2014 focused the country's attention on the issue.
She had only been in Winnipeg a couple of weeks after leaving her great-aunt's home on the Sagkeeng First Nation, about 70 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
She was in the care of Child and Family Services, but police said Tina became an exploited youth in the Manitoba capital. They say she met Cormier at a residence they both frequented.
Court documents allege Tina was killed around Aug. 10, 2014 — 10 days after she was first reported missing from foster care. Police picked her up two days before it's believed she was killed, but did not take her into custody.
Tina's family has said she was found a few hours later, passed out in a downtown alley, and taken to hospital. She was picked up by social workers and placed in a downtown hotel, but ran away again shortly before she was killed.
The province has since ended the practice of housing children in care in hotels.
