Windsor police have arrested a sixth person in connection with the murder of Dalton Robert Bartnik. Bartnik, 27, has been missing since 2024. His body has never been recovered.
The case stands as a striking example of Canadian prosecutors pursuing a murder conviction without physical remains. Windsor Police Service (WPS) charged five of the six suspects with first-degree murder and one with accessory after the fact, according to an official WPS newsroom update. All six arrests occurred within several days of each other, and at least one suspect was already in custody on unrelated charges at the time of arrest.
Seventh Suspect Still Wanted as Investigation Widens
The arrests have not closed the investigation. Samantha Lynn Sweetman is now wanted on a first-degree murder warrant in connection with Bartnik's death, local reports said, bringing the total number of people sought or charged in the case to seven. Police have not publicly disclosed the precise circumstances of Bartnik's disappearance or the evidence underpinning the murder declaration, which is standard practice in active Canadian prosecutions to protect the integrity of future trials.
Building a homicide case without a body is legally demanding but not unprecedented. Prosecutors in both Canada and the United States have secured murder convictions on the strength of witness testimony, forensic evidence, and circumstantial proof of death. In Bartnik's case, the sheer number of people charged with first-degree murder, a charge requiring proof of planning and deliberation under Canadian criminal law, signals that investigators believe they have substantial evidence of an organized killing.
Building a Case Without a Body
The rapid sequencing of arrests drew attention from observers following the case. A comment on Reddit's r/windsorON thread about the arrests, posted by user u/519local and upvoted more than 600 times, read: "Six arrests in a few days for a case with no body found is wild. Windsor PD must have had this locked down for a while before they moved."
The investigation has unfolded against a backdrop of elevated homicide activity in Windsor, a mid-sized city of roughly 230,000 people situated directly across the Detroit River from Detroit, Michigan. A separate Windsor homicide involving 45-year-old Nancy Grewal has been linked by police to an arson case, with WPS urging residents across multiple jurisdictions to submit video footage. In another unrelated case, a second suspect was charged with first-degree murder in a different Windsor homicide involving known associates.
The Bartnik investigation began as a missing person inquiry before authorities formally reclassified it as a homicide. That reclassification, made without the discovery of remains, reflects a determination by investigators that the totality of available evidence ruled out any alternative explanation for Bartnik's disappearance. Bartnik was 27 years old at the time he went missing.
WPS has not released the names of all six arrested individuals or detailed the specific roles each is alleged to have played. The accessory-after-the-fact charge against one suspect indicates police believe that person assisted in concealing the crime or obstructing justice rather than participating directly in the killing, a meaningful legal distinction under the Canadian Criminal Code.
Sweetman's status as a wanted fugitive means the case remains open and active. Anyone with information about her whereabouts is asked to contact Windsor (Canada) Police Service directly.
