The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) says a Mexican citizen has been charged with second-degree murder after a decades-long international investigation into the death of 40-year-old Muriel Lindsay.
Lindsay was found in her home beaten to death on Feb. 16, 1996. At the time, she was an employee of Canada Post on Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver.
Police say Juan Manuel Rueda Salud, now 68, lived in the same building as Lindsay at the time of her death. He was identified as a person of interest, but he left for Mexico in March 1996.
In 2015, investigators found him in Oaxaca, Mexico, the VPD says.
Insp. Ryan Smith, who has been working the case for 12 years, says Rueda Salud was formally charged Nov. 2, 2024, and arrested under a provisional warrant in Mexico on Jan. 22, 2025.
He was in custody for 18 months, police say, while appealing an extradition order. He became eligible for extradition July 15.
This week, VPD investigators flew to Mexico and escorted him back to Vancouver, police said in a news release.
Smith says the Mexican process presented “significant challenges” in the arrest, and he thanked U.S. and Mexican law enforcement authorities for aiding in the investigation.
“Rueda Salud is a Mexican citizen, and just until recently, we didn’t actually have an extradition process with Mexico,” Smith said at a news conference in Vancouver announcing the murder case on Thursday. “So, locating Rueda Salud and then extraditing Rueda Salud obviously created many challenges.”
Smith says he can’t discuss specific evidence in the case as it is now before the courts.
“I can say that our forensic investigators gathered a considerable amount of evidence at the crime scene,” he said.
“We worked diligently for decades with other agencies in Mexico and the United States, as well as Canadian law enforcement agencies and our Forensic Science and Technology partners at BCIT, and we were able to identify Rueda Salud as a suspect.”
The accused remains in custody.
— With files from The Canadian Press
