MONTREAL—He had worked on films dealing with unsolved crimes and a 2007 child kidnapping that captivated Quebecers and broke their hearts when the remains of Cedrika Provencher were discovered two years ago.

But his own true-crime drama, which had police in two provinces looking for the 41-year-old from St-Eustache, Que., and his six-year-old son came to an end Friday when he was caught in a police dragnet in eastern Ontario.

“Happily, we had the ending that everyone hoped for,” Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Martine Asselin told reporters shortly after the 5 p.m. arrest.

Asselin said that Ontario Provincial Police officers near Griffith, Ont., used a nail belt to blow out the tires of the Honda CRV that the accused was driving in with his son, who was unharmed after the ordeal. They arrested the man after a brief foot chase.

The man is suspected in the murder of his spouse, the mother of the six-year-old boy as well as three other children from a previous relationship. The couple had reportedly separated on several occasions but had recently reunited, according to French-language broadcaster TVA, who spoke to the victim’s brother.

The arrest brought an end to a 24-hour manhunt that had police searching across a vast area of western Quebec. The Amber Alert was triggered at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday with the boy’s disappearance. Quebec police confirmed a short while later that they had discovered a dead body at a home in St-Eustache that they believed was related to the case.

Early Friday morning, police discovered the white Ford pick-up truck belonging to the suspect parked and apparently abandoned at a highway rest area in Lachute, Que. Asselin said that investigators believe he got access to the Honda CRV in Lachute that is registered to 71-year-old Yvon Lacasse.

Asselin said Lacasse’s identity was not revealed during the manhunt because of fears it could put him in personal danger or complicate any possible intervention.

“We had to confirm first of all that Mr. Lacasse was there. Also, if he had been taken hostage or anything like that, it might have compromised his security,” she said.

The SQ are now trying to locate Lacasse. They are considering the possibility that he was dropped off somewhere along the road as the suspect was fleeing and they consider him to be a missing person.

From Lachute, the accused is believed to have driven about 600 kilometres northwest to the town of Rouyn-Noranda, near the Quebec-Ontario border, where he briefly checked into a hotel.

He couldn’t have stayed long because the next tip investigators received from what they described as a credible witness placed the accused in Maniwaki, about 400 kilometres to the south. He was reportedly spotted walking, alone, along a main street in the town.

The tip prompted the local Indigenous force, the Zitigan Zibi police, to begin stopping and searching vehicles for the accused and his missing son. But just as a spokesperson for the Zitigan Zibi police was explaining the operation to reporters in Maniwaki, the SQ announced that it had new information placing the suspect in Napanee, 45 kilometres west of Kingston.

The OPP later said the suspect had been spotted about 2:15 p.m. getting money from a bank machine near a Canadian Tire in Napanee.

Throughout the frantic search, friends, colleagues and acquaintances of the accused issued public appeals for him to turn himself in to police and bring an end to the search.

The most prominent of those appeals was from the grandfather of Cedrika Provencher, a nine-year-old girl from Trois-Rivères who was kidnapped in 2007 and whose remains were found in December 2015.

Henri Provencher wrote on Facebook: “Don’t do the irreparable, hand your son over to the police as soon as you can so that he is safe. Thank you for acting as a responsible father . . . Think of your child.”

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The accused and filmmaker Stephane Parent had recently completed a documentary film about the Provencher kidnapping, during which they had worked closely with the girl’s family. Provencher’s father sought a court injunction to block the film, which was to be released this year, from being screened out of concern it would interfere with any future criminal trial.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated from a previous version to remove the identity of the accused, the boy and the victim, pending a child services proceeding.Correction – September 18, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Cedrika Provencher was kidnapped in 1997. As stated correctly in the opening paragraph, she was kidnapped in 2007.

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